Antony Loewenstein

US Vice-President Dick Cheney views the Iraq war as an “enormous success” (shame about those hundreds of thousands dead Iraqis, but hey, “liberation” wasn’t meant to be easy) and Australian Prime Minister John Howard justifies our country’s continued involvement in the most comical way imaginable (“I mean you either stay or you go, you either rat on the ally or you don’t”).

Of course, if you’re James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, you believe that Palestinians are really just dogs with no humanity or decency:

“An Arab Muslim living in Jaffa enjoys freedom of speech, religion, and expression, and can vote for his representatives in the Knesset, and doesn’t go to sleep worrying that some government element might come and kill him. I think that once the Palestinians start treating Jewish settlers with that same degree of humanity – and they’re very, very far from doing that now – at that point I think we have to seriously consider how they could have some degree of self-governing. I won’t get into the question of borders, but what I think is that the Palestinians must be held to the same standards as Israel regarding how they treat the other. I am sure this will be many decades from now, though, because their children are taught the Wahhabi doctrine of being suicide bombers and the like.” 

Jewish settlers should be treated with respect? It’s really hard to imagine why the US is vigorously despised throughout the region.

Salameh Nematt, Jordanian analyst and the former Washington bureau chief for the Arabic-language daily newspaper al-Hayat:

“It’s [Iraq] a success story for al-Qaeda, a success story for autocratic Arab regimes that made democracy look ugly in their people’s eyes. They can say to their people: ‘Look at the democracy that the Americans want to bring to you. Democracy is trouble. You may as well forget about what the Americans promise you. They promise you death.’” 

My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:

Nearly six years after 9/11, the Bush administration (ably assisted by Israel and a handful of acquiescent governments, such as Britain and Australia) appears to be softening up the public for a military strike against Iran.

The evidence for such a mission is partly rhetorical. One of Israel’s leading historians, Benny Morris, has written in the Jerusalem Post that, “the second holocaust will not be like the first…Israel has about seven million inhabitants. No Iranian will see or touch an Israeli. It will be quite impersonal.”

He argues as if an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel is a given and ignores the historical record, ably provided by Professor Zeevi, lecturer at the department of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben Gurion University, who explains that, “throughout the Islamic Republic’s years of existence, since 1979, it has not initiated a single war”. Advocates of war against Iran also ignore the assistance provided by Iran to the Americans after 9/11, especially in routing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to lead the charge towards a seemingly inevitable military showdown – even though some of his public statements indicate that he hopes for a diplomatic resolution – yet cares little for the political manoeuvring within Iran against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Dissent is stirring in the US establishment. The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democrat Senator John D Rockefeller IV, told the New York Times last week that, “to be quite honest, I’m a little concerned that it’s Iraq again.” He said there was little solid intelligence to match the administration’s almost-hysterical position against Iran. He blamed advisors who believed a militant stance would benefit America’s national interests.

The attempt to paint Iran as the world’s leading terrorist state (and a menace to its people and the world) is eerily reminiscent of wild claims about Iraq before 2003. The removal of the Iranian regime will not, despite the best intentions of war supporters, “stabilise” Iraq.

The US has demanded that Iran butt out of Iraqi affairs (perhaps not realising that Tehran already exercises vast control over the country) and ignored serious Iranian moves to negotiate with Washington. Soundly rebuffed, Iran has already signalled its response to a United Nations resolution against its nuclear program.

Such ominous developments pose important questions for the Howard government. What role, if any, would Australian forces play in a US strike against Iran (and are we already involved in planning?) Ultimately, a wider Middle East war will only accelerate the ultimate demise of the West’s favourite client state: Israel.

Jimmy Carter on Australian radio discusses his latest book on Israel and Palestine.

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Amira Hass, Haaretz, January 24:

Anyone who wants to become acquainted with Israeli society should go to the checkpoints. Not for a quarter of an hour, under the guidance of commanders who will glory in the pavilion they built for the people waiting in line and will explain that the upgrading and the expansion of the checkpoint are intended to benefit the locals. Those who really want to know the checkpoints should rather dwell here for hours, during several days. When you observe the soldiers, you will discover many Israeli characteristics among them, characteristics in which we have always taken pride.

Comradeship, for example. The comradeship is so strong that there are those who feel they can even deviate from the norms that have been created at the checkpoint, which are perverted in any case. At the Taysir checkpoint, for example, in two cases documented during the past two weeks, a soldier urinated in public, and in the presence of women. Perhaps it was the same soldier both times, or perhaps two different soldiers. This was but an extreme manifestation of the scorn the soldiers at the checkpoint demonstrate for the people who are at their mercy and must pass through there – teachers, farmers, merchants, schoolchildren, workers at the settlements. But this is also an expression of the soldiers’ self-confidence, of the knowledge that none of their comrades will prevent them from doing things they would not do in Binyamina or Bnei Brak. 

Def Poetry’s Suheir Hammad on a different kind of outlook:

Jimmy Carter stands up for his beliefs at a recent public lecture at Brandeis University, displays dignity in the face of Zionist aggression and explains how the future of the Jewish state is in jeopardy.

It’s a message that many Americans are keen to hear (hence his book becoming a best-seller, and the Zionist lobby’s fear.)

UPDATE: A Carter spectic opens her mind.

Bill O’Reilly on the Colbert Report:

Iraq is in flames and President Bush talks about not “failing“. So what does an administration do in times of trouble?

Wheel out the Vice-President’s daughter and beg the American people to only accept “victory”. Comedy on a virtually unprecedented scale ensues.

Yoel Marcus, Haaretz, January 23:

With all due respect to the public censure of bungles and briberies, with all due respect to the pursuit of honesty, the eagerness to punish those who are guilty and the fiery rhetoric in the media, please, for God’s sake, do us a favor: Don’t cripple the country.

In its 60-odd years, Israel has had 31 governments. Soon we’ll be beating the record of the French Fourth Republic. The current government has been in office for barely eight months. What good will it do us to have another government that can’t cure our basic ills, which today range from arrogance to insensitivity? 

Jeff Cohen, Common Dreams, January 22:

Prominent pundits seem ecstatic over Hillary Clinton’s entry into the presidential race just days after Barack Obama’s media-created candidacy became official. Media talking heads are having so much fun lately they don’t seem to notice that our political system is failing to address ever-worsening problems: social, environmental, fiscal and imperial.

Widely regarded? Actually, progressives see Hillary Clinton as having been consistently wrong on the war and a host of other issues, especially trade. Her absurdly bureaucratic healthcare proposal in 1993 – shaped by and for big insurance companies – was a slap in the face of unions, Congress members and grassroots forces who’d built a movement for simple, nonprofit national health insurance: in effect, enhanced Medicare for All. She helped set back the cause of universal coverage for years. 

FarsiTube.