883 Days: Can You Hold Your Breath?

The Lebanon war has been distracting to Americans since we seem to feel that it has little to do with us directly. Some see it as part of the buildup to the Iran war, to eliminate Hezbollah as a theatre in that war since policymakers believe Iran controls Hezbollah and would send them into action in response to an American or Israeli attack upon Tehran. That seems too simplistic to me. More likely would be to test conventional "bunker buster" bombs on fortifications supposedly designed by Iranians. It would be interesting to know what Israeli and American analysts have concluded about the bombing of Lebanon since it will no doubt influence the use/non-use of nuclear weapons against Iran. One of the oddities of the new studies area - 4th Generation Warfare - is that it concentrates on asymmetry of weak, non-state adversaries and mostly avoids mentioning the Powell Doctrine (overwhelming force) that is an integral part of this 4GW scenario. News reports quote a General stating explicitly that if (when) the Iran war arrives the US has the capability to deliver guided munitions to as many as 10,000 targets within a mere few hours. Gone are the days of conventional war, with the slow buildup of forces before attack. Not that these "boots on the ground" won't be used; rather, it's start with a knockout punch to, minimally, stun the opponent and render him defenseless for the following attacks. The real danger of this new air power approach is that only those in on it -the secretive Junta- know what's coming down the pike: thermonuclear war between the first sip of coffee and buttering the toast. This requires us to read the tea leaves, to try to predict the future, so that we can act beforehand to forestall catastrophe.

The Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld regime came to office with a vision for the future. They are true believers and this is their last and best chance to effect their designs. Rumsfeld is old; Cheney has a heart even older; Bush is a moron. With the demise of the Soviet Union and advances in weaponry and targeting capability (for the first time the US believes it really has a first strike capacity against Russia) the wishes and dreams of the imperialistic, capitalistic ruling class sees nothing to hold it back from dominating the world. These people want to spread the costs around but are not really fearful of any country anywhere on the planet. The only thing that stands between them and their wish-fulfillment is potential opposition in the homeland. This bodes ill for our future. Unlike the days of Viet Nam there is not a large, vehement anti-war movement nor is there much opposition within the ruling elite itself. This is obvious in the positions of elected officials. There is much distaste for the crude, crass and aggressive behavior of the B-C Junta but not over substance. Capitalism, even with the opening of markets, including labor markets, worldwide, is caught in a consumption crisis and the long life of capitalist hegemony through credit is on a precipice. Retraction and realignment are on the agenda. This spells Depression and the costs of oil concomitant with expansion of the Mideast war will hasten the crisis' onset. Being smart enough to plan so many scenarios, no doubt policymakers have factored this in as well. Contracts to KBR for design of detention camps and unlimited spying on the home populace are all part of this scenario.

Given the non-involvement of Iraq or Iran in 9/11 it is obvious that the "war on terror" has a purpose other than protecting us from terrorists. With the recent arrests in the UK the Bushies have been quick to try connecting Al Qaeda with those arrests (something the British have not done) just as they did with the non-existent Saddam-9/11 link. The purpose of terrorism is to terrify and our being terrified is precisely what the B-C Junta wants. A terrified population docilely follows their leader to safety. Of course, the US actions in the Middle East have not produced safety nor was such a result intended. But only a few million of US citizens will benefit personally from this expansion of domination so our Dear Leader has to lie to us to have us go along for the thrills of death and destruction, all on widescreen TV. A stern Leader with a frightened citizenry is the ticket to hegemony. If the B-C Junta intends to attack Iran as so many believe, only two groups can nix the project: the Congress and the military General Staff. But of the many hundreds of generals defections are likely to be few and they will feel duty-bound and legally bound to keep their mouths shut even should they resign. Some may have nightmares about Viet Nam or even Nuremberg and don't want to see themselves in the dock charged with war crimes. And the Congress (there are some very principled, courageous members) is mostly a bunch of self-serving wusses, more interested in playing court politics than in being true leaders. Two years and five months, 883 days, left in (legal) office. Anyone noted any Bush retreat? Anyone think the Decider is going to twiddle his thumbs for all that time?

Many, such as Mister Kristol Balls, the Newt, B and C themselves, keep harping on the Islamo-Fascism ploy. These people must be supernaturalists since four years ago Saddam equalled Hitler and now both Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad have become possessed with Adolf's spirit. One problem with bringing up Munich, as many do, is that when Chamberlain cowed before Hitler it was over the seizure of Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The only players seizing territory these days are the United States and Israel. Black is white; ignorance is knowledge; war is peace. (Sigh). Fascism was coined by Mussolini and defined as the Corporate State (this is a hint). By evoking the accoutrements (fasces) of Imperial Rome, Mussolini, a journalist by trade, hoped to win the people to his side. Aggressive foreign policy, repression of the home populace, the demonization of enemies, the drive for profits, the new nationalism is the "clash of civilizations." These are the props of the new fascism and they don't reside in Tehran or Baghdad or Lebanon but in New York and Washington and London. Accepting this does not require liking or befriending Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah; the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. But by demonizing and warring against these countries and groups and peoples (such as Muslims) we are creating new enemies and creating conditions where populations will hide and protect extremists since "we" are tarring all of them with the same brush.

The future looks grim: expansion of the war, worldwide recession, widespread social disorder within the US as the economy shrinks, severe repression. If and when real change comes in our world it will start in the US. Only the American people, in the large, have the ability to change the fundamentals. But as with most historical change, we're likely to act only as a last resort and only when conditions become intolerable. A lot of people in the world will suffer and die before we get a clue and turn off the TV. Ignorance is costly, stupidity even more so. But it's hard to be optimistic when so many are willing to jump on the jingoistic bandwagon. And if things get really bad, Bush may declare an emergency and remain in power indefinitely. Perhaps that would sufficiently anger Americans and motivate them to, for the first time, make ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We are living in days beyond satire, which means thinking through plausible implications of ideological positions. But there is no longer anything implicit; the word has been made flesh.

How Hazy Is Your Crystal Ball?

Lebanon is carnage; Baghdad is a debacle. Most rational observers, judging from news commentaries, expect both the US administration and the Israeli government to seek a quick way out of the devastation. But as with a blind spot in one's visual field, these analysts assume both that what they "see" our leaders also "see" and that what they, the commentators, don't "see" doesn't exist. Yet there appears little reason to justify any vision of a forseeable end to these conflicts. From the beginning of its attack on Lebanon Olmert has consistently stated that Israel will destroy Hezbollah militarily. Though proving more prolonged and difficult than anticipated, Israel's best hope may be that through consumption and attrition Hezbollah will eventually run out of missiles. Then the ground forces can continue to hunt down and kill the remaining fighters, probably thousands of them. With the US supplying it, Israel will not run out of ammunition. In Iraq, the Decider has shown no sign of pulling back. To the contrary, Bush's equation of Mid East turmoil with Syria and Iran promises an expansion of the war to those countries.

Much ink has been spilled recently recapitulating the sorry history of aerial bombing. Goering's air campaign in the Battle of Britain brought the British together and steeled their resolve. Later the Allies carpet bombed Germany to degrade industrial production yet war production actually increased. The firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities did not yield surrender. The one fly in this ointment was the Bomb: shortly after Nagasaki, Japan surrendered.

If the Mid East war(s) spreads it will be an air campaign. But given its questionable efficacy, why would Bush do it?

• You can't prove a negative. While sober analysis of past wars has shown aerial bombing of limited utility and ground warfare being decisive, this is not math or physics: propositions cannot be proved.
• Bombs Away looks good on TV. Saying this is grotesque but it's true. Watch the news videos of Lebanon: cities into wastelands, everything destroyed, it must work. One problem is that the cities were built by people and people can rebuild them. From Indochina to Afghanistan to Algeria to the Lebanon, wars are about people fighting people, not machines fighting machines. To reuse a quotation attributed to Stalin: Bombs don't win wars; people win wars. Statements such as "the Vietnamese never defeated the US militarily" are both true and without meaning. The Mujihadeen never "defeated" the Soviet Union either. People fight wars for reasons and they quit fighting for reasons as well. Short of total annihilation we always have to make up with our enemies at some point. Do Western WarMongers expect to exterminate all Arabs or all Muslims? Maybe they do.
• Pacify the home front. The perversity of modern media that gives vicarious thrills. As with a video game, war reports are both real and unreal, like watching Top Gun. Obviously this depends upon the bombs falling over there, and not over here.
• Minimize the reality at home. With cruise missiles they die, we don't. Ground wars kill people on both sides and the mounting toll of dead and wounded soldiers tends to kill the blood lust of the home population.

I don't have the precise quotation at hand but supposedly Madeleine Albright asked, rhetorically I assume, Colin Powell: what's the point of having this wonderful military if we can't use it? For the first time in memory, I saw a report that the Israelis are dusting off their nukes. Which brings us back to that fly in the ointment: the Japanese did surrender after two atomic bombs. Here too a causal relationship cannot be proved. But for aggressive imperialists like Bush and Olmert the possibility must be attractive indeed. During the Cold War the Soviets pledged a no-first-use policy. The US did not and has not, and, is the only country to have used nukes in war. Also the only country to threaten, at least implicitly, to use them: all options are on the table.

Bush and Olmert have their own Final Solution. Conventional bombs have never been decisive and ground wars are costly. The US Army is overstretched in Iraq. But Bush hasn't backed down. He may not be bright but he is zealous. Listen to him or Rice on the news regarding Lebanon. They demand a "lasting solution" and not a cessation of hostilities. And the neo-cons continue to call for expanding the war into Syria and Iran. Olmert himself threatens this.

A true lasting peace would require respecting the rights of other peoples and their countries: an Israeli pullback from seized lands and the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state; US withdrawal from Iraq and our paying for the destruction we have caused; respect for sovereignty of Iran and making treaties, not war with it. But such sanity and reasonableness is not in the Decider's fundamentalist Bible, nor Olmert's Torah.

Bush has 2 years, 5 months and 12 days left (legally) in office. Has anyone found any evidence that he is changing course? He may have some trouble with domestic legislation but don't await the resurrection of the still-born compassionate conservatism. Can we expect him to simply tread (international) water, in true lame duck status, for all that time? Bush may have trouble with the public; he may have trouble with the Congress. But as Commander in Chief he can kill all the people he wants, and I suspect he wants to kill a lot of them.

A New Middle East?

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice used what a polite observer might call a malapropism in describing the carnage in Lebanon as the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." More like a bang I'd say. Ms. Rice is unmarried and presumably childless. As with the delivery room, she also wasn't speaking while Israeli bombs fell about her. If the same expression had been used by Bush some commentators would have called the analogy sexist. But I'll give her some rope, at least enough for a noose. Perhaps we are awaiting the birth of Rosemary's baby: a monster.

So, while we ponder this deliverance let's consider the old Middle East. Taken over by imperialistic European powers, basically France and Britain, who saw to it that compliant, puppet governments were installed and who acted through those marionettes to keep the populations repressed, or at least tame, carving up artificial countries and mixing ethnicities willy-nilly. Lebanon itself was carved out of the French mandate of Syria specifically to have a Christian population and president. So it's kind of odd to hear people decrying Syria's involvement in what was once part of Syria.

After the big one, WW II, came the new big boy on the block and since that time that oil rich region has been considered a "vital national security interest" of the United States. To counter Soviet influence, to beat down independent nationalistic movements, to keep the spigots flowing, the US helped to overthrow independence-minded regimes -- such as the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran -- and to put in place brutally repressive regimes such as Iran's Shah. In the midst of this Israel was founded as an explicit religious, racialist country. It pushed the Palestinians out of their homes to make way for this Jewish state and its expansionist policy has continued for nearly a half-century seizing ever more Palestinian lands. Along the way Israel wrote laws that kept Palestinians away from their homes and allowed the Israeli government to grab them because of abandonment. Neat trick, huh?

Israel started aggressive wars against neighboring Arab states and continues to hold their territory such as the Golan Heights from Syria (which contains the headwaters of the Jordan river) and the Shebaa farms area of Lebanon (I heard an Israeli on the radio say Shebaa actually belongs to Syria, not Lebanon. This thief remembers his victims!) In fact, if you go back and read contemporaneous news reports of the Hezbollah capture of those two Israeli soldiers, the accounts state that the events occurred inside Lebanon and was the result of an Israeli border excursion! Whatever the "truth" current conventional wisdom is that this particular Israeli war was in the works for over a year and Hezbollah merely provided the pretext.

The source of MidEast turmoil has been the heavy-handed exploitation of the region by the Western powers, their support for anti-democratic, oppressive regimes, and the Israelis' murderously harsh treatment of Palestinians and neighboring Arab states, all done with Western aid and collusion (propaganda, diplomacy, UN vetoes, money, arms, etc.). One might think for a "new" Middle East to be born the US would first have to stop meddling in those peoples' affairs.

Israel intends to decimate Hezbollah. It is not paranoia to think that the US, British and Israeli "deciders" are and have been working together these past few years in a coordinated plan to transform the area from the Mediterranean to the Pakistani border. (For the Israeli lobby freaks, this morning Stanley Fischer was on the news speaking about the Lebanese war's likely effects on the Israeli economy. Mr. Fischer is an American citizen, an economist, once an official of the World Bank, the IMF, Citigroup, US government adviser to Israel. He's also an Israeli citizen and is now Governor of the Bank of Israel.) Iraq and Lebanon are being served up now (the Palestinians are always on the menu) with Syria and Iran as the next course. Israel has been trying to secure its home base for 48 years yet remains unsuccessful. We had our Man in Iran -the Shah- which the Iranians overthrew 27 years ago. Now we complain about the Mullahs. If we really wanted a region populated with friendly, cooperative governments and peoples we would have acted almost the opposite. Some might think we'd have some brains and learn. "Don't take me long to look at a horseshoe!" said the blacksmith as he stared at his burnt fingers.

But now we are committed to creating a new Middle East. We'll call this the spreading of democracy. It might cost a few thousand lives, or a few hundred thousands the way Iraq is going, or a few million if we nuke Iran. The US is recycling its counterinsurgency doctrine from VietNam, which itself grew out of popular resistance movements in WW II. It was easy to ally with the Viet Minh when we were all fighting the Japanese invaders but how many Frenchmen do you suppose realized that once that was done they would then turn against the French as just another foreign invader? One premise of counterinsurgency doctrine supposedly is to win hearts and minds. The US pushed the Israelis to allow the Palestinians to hold elections and they elected Hamas. Immediately thereafter we pulled the plug and plugged up their money and have left them to starve and rot, unless the bombs and missiles kill them first. Elected Hamas representatives now sit in Israeli jails as kidnapped hostages. It is obvious that what Bush and Blair and Olmert think of as democracy is not what most of the world thinks of as democracy.

The Virgin Rice's "new" Middle East looks to me a lot like the "old" Middle East, just a bit more brutal and dangerous. Today's events are tomorrow's history and to use an ancient historical expression (attributed both to Seneca and Plutarch): let's call a spade a spade. The next time you see Bush or Rice or Olmert etc. on the news consider this: are these the faces and voices of mass murderers? Will true freedom and liberty and democracy and the rule of law come soon enough for these persons to be called to account within their natural lifespans?