Tomgram

"The cavalry on the new American frontier"

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In the desert that is the new Middle East, it’s raining threats. On these Bush administration threats, aimed largely but not only at Syria, Ha’aretz correspondent Bradley Burston (Shock and Assad — Israel’s wish list,) offers the following gloss from Itamar Rabinovich, former ambassador to Washington and chief negotiator in past diplomatic contacts between Israel and Syria:

“”Immediately following a successful war against Saddam Hussein, President Bush has an advantage – he doesn’t have to be specific about his threats.’

“At this point, the translation of recent military prowess [in Iraq] into deterence may prove to suffice. ‘Just as the United States doesn’t want to go to war, Syria doesn’t want to be attacked. Syria today must take into account the possibility of a focused American military operation, in the light of the capabilities the U.S. has demonstrated over the last three weeks.’

“Syria must also take into account that ‘after the lifting of the Iraqi threat, the two remaining sources of the threat in the area are Iran and Syria. Of the two, Syria is the easier target.'”

Let’s keep in mind that it’s hard for this administration to skip the “easy targets,” though even easy targets invariably prove to have their own problems. Witness, for instance, the following comment from surprising quarters, reminding us that the extremity of the political aims and decisions of our homegrown fundamentalists is disturbing, unnerving, stomach-churning to more than antiwar activists. According to www.antiwar.com,

“Yesterday, Lawrence Eagleburger, who was US Secretary of State under George Bush Sr., told the BBC: ‘If George Bush [Jr.] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can’t get away with that sort of thing in this democracy.'”

For those of us still trying to absorb events in the Middle East (and who isn’t?), I include below a smart and unexpected analysis in Ha’aretz of Israel’s possibly reduced place in the new post-Iraq American imperium. On the implications of this “cakewalk” of a war for the rest of us, you’ll find a piece from the www.openDemocracy.net website by the wonderful British essayist, art critic, and novelist, John Berger, whose thoughts always surprise and move. (“When one tyranny is overthrown, not by the people concerned, but by another tyranny, the result risks to be chaos”)

“At this point, the translation of recent military prowess [in Iraq] into deterence may prove to suffice. ‘Just as the United States doesn’t want to go to war, Syria doesn’t want to be attacked. Syria today must take into account the possibility of a focused American military operation, in the light of the capabilities the U.S. has demonstrated over the last three weeks.’

“Syria must also take into account that ‘after the lifting of the Iraqi threat, the two remaining sources of the threat in the area are Iran and Syria. Of the two, Syria is the easier target.'”

Let’s keep in mind that it’s hard for this administration to skip the “easy targets,” though even easy targets invariably prove to have their own problems. Witness, for instance, the following comment from surprising quarters, reminding us that the extremity of the political aims and decisions of our homegrown fundamentalists is disturbing, unnerving, stomach-churning to more than antiwar activists. According to www.antiwar.com,

“Yesterday, Lawrence Eagleburger, who was US Secretary of State under George Bush Sr., told the BBC: ‘If George Bush [Jr.] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can’t get away with that sort of thing in this democracy.'”

For those of us still trying to absorb events in the Middle East (and who isn’t?), I include below a smart and unexpected analysis in Ha’aretz of Israel’s possibly reduced place in the new post-Iraq American imperium. On the implications of this “cakewalk” of a war for the rest of us, you’ll find a piece from the www.openDemocracy.net website by the wonderful British essayist, art critic, and novelist, John Berger, whose thoughts always surprise and move. (“When one tyranny is overthrown, not by the people concerned, but by another tyranny, the result risks to be chaos”)

Finally, hard as it’s been to take in the new, stripped down, muscled up America in its computer-warrior, Dr. Doom guise, it may be even more difficult to take in that same America as an occupying force. We’re talking about something like locusts here, like a high-class version of the impoverished looters of now thoroughly stripped down Baghdad. Postwar “American” Iraq is likely to be the sort of thing that gives even “crony capitalism” a bad name. The Scottish paper the Glasgow Sunday Herald has done a remarkable investigation, “Carving up the new Iraq,” of who is about to sit down at the Iraqi dinner table, set with plenty of food and few eating utensils. I’ve seen nothing so thorough. These are the men who, from a comfortable distance, still in their childhood movie mode, imagine the American military as “the cavalry on the new American frontier.” The Sunday Herald’s piece should be magnetized to the refrigerator or pinned to the bulletin board. Like any good game — say, Monopoly, for instance — you need a scorecard to sort out the players and here’s that scorecard for the neocons and the military-industrial-think-tank world they inhabit. Tom

The war’s implications for Israel
By Aviad Kleinberg
Ha’aretz
April 12, 2003

The war in Iraq was more than the first expression of the United States’ readiness to go to war as an empire. It was also a conceptual experiment that bears profound implications. What the United States learned from this test – as had already been hinted in the smaller war fought in Afghanistan – is that it is the master of the world and can make use of its force almost without interference and without it exacting a true price, neither in casualties nor in economic or strategic assets.

The choice of Iraq was no accident. Iraq was not selected because it posed a strategic threat. Even if it had stocks of chemical weapons, it is hard to view these as a global danger. There are countries that are far more dangerous.

To read more Kleinberg click here

To the mountain
By John Berger
openDemocracy
April 14, 2003

“If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.” George W. Bush

Baghdad has fallen. The city has been taken by the troops who were bringing it freedom. Its hospitals are wailingly overcrowded with burnt and maimed civilians, many of them children, and all of them victims of the computerised missiles, shells and bombs launched by the city’s liberators. The statues of Saddam Hussein have been overturned. Meanwhile at a Pentagon press conference, the US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld is suggesting that the next country to be liberated may be Syria.
*
Early this morning came an e-mail from a friend who is a painter: “The world today is hard to look at, let alone think of”. All of us can recognise ourselves in that cry from the heart – yet let’s think.

To read more Berger click here

Carving Up The New Iraq
By Neil Mackay
The Glasgow Sunday Herald
April 13, 2003

Iraq lies in ruins this morning. Its cities are bombed; its buildings have been torched by teenage arsonists; its shops, hospitals, factories and homes have been looted. This is Year Zero for Iraq. The old regime is gone and the United States is to rebuild this country literally from the ground up.

Since the beginning of the year, America has had its reconstruction plan in place. Answering directly to Centcom commander General Tommy Franks, retired Lt Gen Jay Garner will be in command of the reconstruction effort. He will be aided by a series of military hardmen, diplomats and Republican party place-men who will help the United States create “Free Iraq” – aided by exiles who are returning to get their share of the spoils.

To read more of this Sunday Herald piece click here and then
click here