Antony Loewenstein

America’s descent into obscurity continues apace under the leadership of the Bush administration.

While it continues to outspend the rest of the world militarily, the US continues to take umbrage at countries not in its Rolodex, arming themselves.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is arriving in Russia at the end of June on an official visit.

Pundits are asking whether the two sides will sign new contracts for arms supplies, in particular, submarines. The United States is particularly interested. For some reason it thinks its opinion must be taken into account in the decision-making process.

The Bush administration has cause for concern. Russia has entered the arms market so aggressively in recent years that many, including the U.S. itself, have called American dominance into doubt.

Apart from the fact that the US and Israel prefer it when their enemies can’t fight back, the US is finding that it is no longer the only kid on the block when it comes to providing arms. Just as significantly, the buyers are scrutinizing the bang they are getting for their buck, and this makes US arms manufacturers look bad.

Many countries like Russian weapons, and not only regular buyers. Recently more armies have changed suppliers, finding that equipment from Russia is more advanced, more reliable and less expensive. Colombia’s armed forces purchased 10 Mi-17 military transport helicopters, which not only perform better than American Black Hawks, but also cost $18 million less – an important factor for a country which is not among the richest on the continent.

Better and cheaper than the equivalent produced in the cradle of capitalism? That must hurt.

If that’s not bad enough, America’s darling in the Middle East is fast becoming fed up with Bush and his neocon policies. The US was noticeably absent from the summit in sunny Sharm el-Sheikh.

And who isn’t coming to this sad party? The United States, the superpower with the lion’s share of responsibility for the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. Who stayed home? President George W. Bush, the one whose semi-hallucinatory dream of democratization has become a genuine reality of anarchy; whose adopted vision of two states – Israel and Palestine – has become during his tenure a distant dream. It is difficult to think of an American president who has caused more damage to Israeli interests than the president who is considered one of the friendliest to Israel of all time. No leader has done more than Bush – by commission as well as omission – to destroy the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

You know that America is in bad shape when even Israel is glad not to have them around.

Officials in Olmert’s government are sighing in great relief over the lowering of the American profile. To understand the depth of these leanings, one must go to Damascus. Vice President Farouk Shara interpreted Bush’s statements using the following harsh, but accurate, words: “The American president does not want peace between Israel and Syria.” Israeli intelligence officials are already warning that the opposite of peace is imminent war between Israel and Syria. This means that Bush is refusing to help prevent another round of blood-letting. What an outcry would erupt here were he to refuse to aid us by shipping a cannon or a helicopter over, and sending us out alone with the Arabs to handle the next war.

The milestones of failure and carnage continue to pile up in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, occupation forces have surpassed the Taliban in terms of the death toll inflicted on the population.

Occupiers have killed more civilians this year than the ‘Taliban’. That doesn’t include the civilians they killed in Pakistan. But it does include this latest massacre. Now, as usual, the occupiers say that it was the ‘Taliban’ what made them do it. When shall we hear solemn press-releases, solemnly recounted by newspapers, in which the ‘Taliban’ explain that they meant to hit only occupying troops with their latest suicide attack, but that the occupiers forced them to strike in civilian areas by hiding in humvees and helicopters and Bradley tanks, driving through densely populated areas and thus using the surrounding people as human shields like the cowards they are?

Meanwhile in Iraq, the destruction being perpetrated in the name of freedom and democracy defies description.

‘ We are enveloping the enemy into a kill sack,’ said Command Sergeant Major Jeff Huggins from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade, according to Reuters (23rd June.) A ‘kill sack’? Good luck America, when these sickos return home. Shutter the windows, bar the doors – and above all, lock up your daughters. Remember little Abeer al-Janabi, multiply raped in nearby in Mahmoudiya, her family shot and she and all burned to cover the evidence? Remember Abu Ghraib? And where else? Think rape, rape, rape, sodomy, sodomy, sodomy – think the furthest other reaches of the most bestial inhumanity to man, women and yes, children. Think of America’s finest selling the pictures of the dead, dying, defiled on the internet, in exchange for porn. Think also of chains of command. Where does the cover up start and how high does it go?

‘We are not carpet bombing these things.* People know if we get resistance from a house, we’ll take out that house and the people in it, but not the entire street.’ How thoughtful. Any one reflected that most on earth would ‘resist’ their home being trashed by strangers, their children and women terrified (or worse) at 3 a.m. (or any time) risking also any belongings of value and money stolen? Residents have no right to refuse and can be shot (no questions asked later) for just that. *Iraqis, please note, it seems, are now ‘things’.

Meanwhile, on the face of all this, the 24 per-centers have adopted an abysmal fall back position – the possibility that some day in the future, the disaster that we are witnessing today may unfold into a positive outcome.

To blithely wave away the current horror on the ground and say that the death and destruction in Iraq will someday be seen as “worth it” and rest easy believing that future generations will thank us for our generous decision to invade their country and unleash hell is morally repugnant. I would say it is far more likely that they will never forgive us.

Perhaps these wingnuts really do have a soul and are using this device to come to terms with what they have unleashed on humanity. More likely however, it is just a desperate means to avoid having to admit how wrong they are.

What good are all those state of the art weapons if you can’t use them?

Israel is preparing for an imminent war with Iran, Syria and/or their non-state clients.

Israeli military intelligence has projected that a major attack could come from any of five adversaries in the Middle East. Officials said such a strike could spark a war as early as July 2007.

In other words, just like we saw in 2006, Israel has probably been instructed by Washington to attack these countries, and will pounce on any incident, real or manufactured, to carry out these plans. It is also possible that an attack on US soil could serve as a pretext.

The US media consensus is that “the United States faces its greatest threat of a terrorist assault since the September 11 attacks” (USA Today, 12 February 2006) The American Homeland is threatened by ” Islamic terrorists”, allegedly supported by Tehran and Damascus.

America is under attack” by an illusive “outside enemy”.

Concepts are turned upside down. War becomes Peace. “Offense” becomes a legitimate means of “self-defense”. In the words of President Bush:

“Against this kind of enemy, there is only one effective response: We must go on the offense, stay on the offense, and take the fight to them.” (President George W. Bush, CENTCOM Coalition Conference, May 1, 2007)

The intent is to seek a pretext to wage a preemptive war.

A “terrorist attack on America” could be used to justify, in the eyes of an increasingly credulous public opinion, on “humanitarian grounds”, the launching of a major theater war directed against Iran and Syria.

Tristero:

Liberals! They’re always such literalists. Consider the liberal blogosphere’s cynical objection to the modern usage of the term “Al Qaeda,” as if it should still be restricted merely to “followers of bin Laden” when clearly times, and al Qaeda, have changed. Only liberals are stuck in the past.

Look people, war is a complicated business. And this war, which we all know is unlike any other in history, is the most complex war ever. And sure enough, if you examine this war through a typically liberal microscope, it’s hopeless! No wonder that nobody can figure out what the hell we’re doing there, because nobody can figure out who the enemy is. There are Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, insurgents, rebels, warlords, street gangs, terrorists who are existential threats, terrorists who were once existential threats but who are now American allies, and heaven knows what else. And what purpose is served by such obsessive discrimination? They’re all Arabs after all, no different than the Iranis – or is it Iranians? Hell, who can remember such stuff?

And that is what’s behind the latest media policy, which finesses all unnecessary liberal distinctions without a real difference. As Glenn Greenwald correctly notes, this simplifies…no, clarifies the situation for maximum comprehension by an American audience:

…anyone we fight is automatically designated “Al Qaeda”

Back in ’02 or ’03, Glenn Reynolds averred that those who opposed the Iraq war from the start were “ojectively pro-Saddam.” Today, all we need to do is to generalize Reynolds’ important principle. Then, we apply it to the media’s commendable effort to tell the story of the GWOT straight, no chaser, ie, in the simplest clearest terms possible. Therefore:

To oppose Bush’s “surge” means you objectively support al Qaeda’s efforts in Iraq.

Even clearer:

To oppose the Bush surge essentially means you’re a member of al Qaeda.

And for purists who want the clearest possible message, just eliminate “essentially.”

You won’t find any major Zionist leaders acknowledging the disastrous Bush legacy for Israel – after all, they see their role as little more than rubber-stamping Israeli brutality against the Palestinians – but leading Haaretz commentator Akiva Eldar speaks the truth:

Heavy clouds will float over today’s summit in sunny Sharm el-Sheikh. The Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Jordan and Egypt will be hovering above the four leaders participating in the talks, as will the zealots of worldwide jihad. Iran and Hezbollah will be with them on the other side, while the extreme right-wing national religious camp awaits in the corner. It is hard to say which of the leaders’ chairs is shakiest and to guess where the next evil will come from – from Syria, which once again has remained on the outside; from Al-Qaida, which is rearing its head in Iraq and casting its eye on the horizon; or from the Egyptian opposition, which smells weakness in the leadership and is amassing power in anticipation of the inheritance battle.

It was Bush who imposed the wretched elections on the Palestinians, despite Hamas’ refusal to fulfill the terms of the Oslo II Accords concerning the participation of political parties in the democratic process. Bush gave his blessing to sacrificing the road map on the altar of unilateral disengagement, an act of charity toward the Palestinian “refusal front” and a death blow to the already damaged peace camp. 

Robert Fisk, The Independent, June 25:

At last it happened. Every one predicted – not least the United Nations officers on the team – that the international UN peacekeeping army in southern Lebanon would be attacked by a Sunni Muslim group attached to al-Qa’ida, and yesterday afternoon three Spanish and three Colombian soldiers paid with their lives for the fulfilment of this prediction.

A roadside bomb between the villages of Marjayoun and Khaim, only six miles from the Israeli border, exploded next to two UN armoured vehicles, killing five UN soldiers and wounding at least four others. Three of the injured were from Spain. The road was at the centre of fierce fighting between the Israeli army and Hizbollah last summer and it is possible – although highly unlikely – that the bombs were munitions left over from those battles. But the straight and remote road between the two villages has been cleared by de-mining officers in the months since the war, and the Lebanese army discovered months ago that Sunni groups around Tripoli had put together maps of southern Lebanon which showed UN patrol routes, including those of the Spanish army.

The Spanish suffered severely for their support for George Bush in the Iraq war, and now, it seems they are paying the price for being part of an expanded UN army in the south of Lebanon, one which was put in place with the encouragement of George Bush and Tony Blair to secure Israel’s northern border after last summer’s conflict. It is an international army commanded by four Nato generals, and many Lebanese regard it as an extension of Nato rather than a UN peacekeeping mission.

My following article appeared in yesterday’s Guardian Comment is Free section:

Spending time in Iran inevitably results in endless conversations about politics. Virtually everybody has an opinion about the US, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nuclear issue, women’s rights or even underground hip-hop (one of the country’s most famous rappers was recently arrested in Tehran for subversive activity.) I’ve never visited a country where the bounds of behaviour are so profoundly divided between the public and private spaces.

The country’s former vice president in parliamentary legal affairs under previous President Khatami, Mohammed Ali Abtahi – he is also a popular reformist blogger – told me last week that the country’s current tensions with the west were highly regrettable, but could be resolved with better diplomacy. He imagined an Iran with strict Islamic values, filtering of “pornographic and inflammatory” websites, no engagement with Israel but societal liberalisation. Like many in Iran, Abtahi is a contradictory figure – not willing to tell the west what they wanted to hear about the Islamic republic – but he remains a believer in strong engagement with the US.

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Iran was the private discussion over the Iraq war. State-run media was comprehensively against the US-led occupation, but many people told me, including Abtahi, that a sudden withdrawal of American troops from the war-ravaged nation was inadvisable. There was a general belief that the country’s chaos would only worsen if US forces left too suddenly. I had simply expected common consensus against the American presence. Despite this position, nobody had any comprehensive ideas how to end the current crisis.

The Iran regularly portrayed in the western media – a Jew-hating president determined to strike Israel – is shunned by many Iranians. Access to the internet is pervasive – around one million blogs exist in Iran and while many are for meeting boys and girls, rather than political in nature, the web has changed the dialogue – and young Iranians are very well aware of the damage being done to their country by Ahmadinjad’s ravings (though none supported a US strike against the country). Iranians appear willing to shun US foreign policy while warmly embracing the American and British peoples, despite both countries meddling in the republic.

Internet censorship is a growing problem, however. Type in words like “choral” or “queer” into Google and both will be blocked (the former because “oral” is a banned phrase.) Google Earth is not generally accessible. There is little international e-business because Iranians can’t easily obtain a Visa or Mastercard, making such transactions virtually impossible (likewise trying to purchase products on sites like Amazon.) The mullahs have realised the potential of the internet – magazine editor and blogger Bozorgmehr Sharafedin said that the reformist movement was failing to gain international support because it translated none of its newspapers into English – and now train bloggers in the holy city of Qom.

Using the internet at Iranian “coffeenets” is an interesting experience. Numerous, seemingly harmless sites are blocked – Australian news-sites are filtered, the New York Times is not – and censorship appears to be based on certain key words appearing regularly on websites. Like in China, where western multinationals are covertly assisting the government in building a massive filtering system, the Iranians, under Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, are following a similar path. Engagement with the outside world is matched by a paranoid mentality that views many Western sources as suspect.

The surreal nature of the regime was highlighted when I spent the day at the offices of the magazine edited by Sharafedin. He received a call from a bureaucrat inside the ministry of culture and was asked why his publication had been released without covers for the past two months. Sharafedin explained that glossy covers had been attached to all editions, and clearly the copies that the ministry had received had been inadvertently published without them (every publication must be submitted weekly to the ministry for their comments and criticisms.) After a short, terse conversation, Sharafedin organised copies of his magazine to be sent to the ministry immediately.

While Iran is an authoritarian country, there is far greater political debate there than many other Middle Eastern nations (such as, say, Syria). Iranians may be the most hospitable people in the world, and yet any American or Israeli attack against the country’s nuclear facilities would be met with even-greater repression at home and rallying around the conservative leadership. For many westerners, the concept of Islam at the heart of a prosperous nation is too much to bear. It’s a sad indictment of many post 9/11 mindsets.

Just who is supporting islamofascism?

Hamas has turned over to the Egyptian authorities substantial parts of the intelligence information that fell into its hands when it overran the headquarters of Fatah-controlled security headquarters in Gaza on Thursday, according to what sources told the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masriyoun. This is the first reported use of the information in question, which has been a topic of speculation.

And the journalist says the sources say the evidence also points to spying on Egyptian forces in Sinai, and to a plan that Dahlan was involved in to assassinate Prime Minister Haniya on his return to Gaza via the Rafah crossing from Egypt last December, to embarass the Egyptian authorities and cause trouble between them and Hamas.

The newspaper adds this is consonant with information it published a few days ago (June 19) reporting on information published by Middle East Newsline”, (apparently referring to this item) which described Egyptian authorities as having become convinced that Dahlan was involved in operations against Egyptian national security, by cooperation with AlQaeda people in undertaking operations against tourist installations in Sinai. And he refers to more general statements about the content of these documents made yesterday by Khalil al-Haya, a senior Hamas person.

Israel and Al Qaeda on the same team? Who would have thought?

Meanwhile, there is evidence that Fatah was plotting to overthrow Hamas (with the help of the US and Israel), thus leaving Hamas with few options but to take a leaf from Washington’s playbook and pre-empt these plans.

Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas spokesman, confirms the movement thought it had to move fast. In his words, last week’s events were “precipitated by the American and Israeli policy of arming elements of the Fatah opposition who want to attack Hamas and force us from office”.

It destroys them, of course.

From the beginning, Denehy’s influence at the Office of Iranian Affairs had stirred up resentment. Suzanne Maloney was on the policy-planning staff at the State Department for two years before she left last month to take up a post at the Brookings Institution. Her experience with the Iran portfolio demonstrates some of the difficulties inherent in democracy promotion. “In a small room it sounds terrific,” she told me. “You put some money on the table, we support freedom and it gets us some points at home.” Maloney, who was one of a handful of staff members at the State Department who spoke some Farsi and had actually been to Iran, said she found herself doing a lot of damage control during her policy-planning stint: “I was worried about the safety of those on the receiving end of the funds. But I also just wondered if this was feasible. I don’t see how a U.S. government that has been absent from Tehran for 30 years is capable of formulating a program that will have a positive effect.” She continued: “You had to wonder where this money was going to go and what’s going to happen when you don’t have the time to sit down and sift through the more questionable proposals. There’s just not enough oversight. Of the 100 or more preliminary proposals I saw under the first call, it was an enormous challenge to find anything viable. This may have been a very high profile, sexy project, but the likelihood of real impact was minimal.”

These people remain convinced that the best way to fix the damage created by a bull in a china shop is to introduce another bull into the shop.

While David Denehy acknowledges the difficulties of the administration’s democracy project, he still finds it critical to Iran’s democratic future. “Is now the time to re-evaluate our support to Iranian civil society?” he asks. “No. . . . Iranian civil society is now under siege, and we do not intend to turn our back on them in their desperate hour. Now is when they need us most.”

An excellent essay from Lenin:

This résumé, far from comprehensive, describes a current and pressing state of affairs. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the lives and conditions of millions of people not living in the United States are determined in part by a largely Anglo-Saxon ruling class, which has learned not to openly espouse the principles of white supremacy and ‘race’ hierarchy, but operates on them nevertheless. Such an order cannot but be organised through the repeated and perpetual application of extreme violence – which task is effected not only by legions of amphetamined Alabama-bred eighteen year olds pumped up on racism and pornography, but also by the private contingent, the warlords and mercenaries and shock troops of different fundamentalisms. Now they are settled on decades of jackboot rule in several strategically important areas, mandate-style colonial governance with a few nods toward representation, as was very much the style in the old days. Apopthegmatically, of course, those who resist that order and support such resistance are evil, inhumane, and anti-democratic. Such people hate freedom, even their own, and abjure it every time they refuse whitey’s rule.

Read more: 

Surprise surprise.

A new Newsweek poll out this weekend exposed “gaps” in America’s knowledge of history and current events.

Little wonder why the government has been able to get away with their misinformation and propaganda.

Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?”

From the Vineyard:

It is a common mistake to think that the US Neocons are somehow concered with the welfare of Israel or the Israelis. In reality, of course, the Neocons are interested in their own power and they simply realize that by mantrically repeating “Israel! existential threat! anti-Semitism! self-hating Jews! Holocaust!” they can get away with murder, literally.

Sadly, there is a Neocon clique in Israel who pretty much uses the same trick.

Thus one cannot be blamed for feeling that “the Israelis” are “behind” the Neocon Imperial nightmare which is unfolding before our eyes.

There is, however, another Israel out there, just as there is a different USA. Today, I wanted to reprint two articles written by two representatives of this “other Israel”: Uri Avnery and Gideon Levy.

Although both Avnery and Levy have made it to the Kahanist website Masada2000 list of “7000+ self-hating Jews list” colorfully, if not tastefully, subtitled “DIRT-list” as in “Defense anti-Israeli Repugnant Traitors” list (and whose URL is even more direct: http://www.masada2000.org/shit-list.html), Avnery and Levy are clearly patriots and love their coutry. One, Avnery, even was a Knesset member and had a rather amazing life dedicated to his country, while the other, Levy, used to be the spokesman for Shimon Peres, the current President of Israel.