SOMALIA : THE US INTERVENES AGAIN

The United States government has once again intervened militarily in Somalia. Its pattern of intervention this time is different from 1992. On 24 December 2006, the Bush Administration chose to use the Ethiopian government to mount an invasion of Somalia. The Ethiopian army with its military superiority has for the time being managed to defeat the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) which in June 2006 had ousted the weak, effete and corrupt interim government of Abdullahi Yusuf and Ali Mohamed Gedi and imposed its rule over most of Somalia. Now the Ethiopian army has restored Abdullahi and Ali to power. They, in turn, have not only endorsed the Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia but have also given their full support to US air strikes ostensibly aimed at al-Qaeda suspects and bases in the country.

Though Ethiopia, with US backing, appears to be in control of the situation at the moment, it is doubtful if it will be able to establish a viable, workable government with total jurisdiction over the whole of Somalia. The UIC has already begun re-grouping and is determined to launch a guerrilla war to regain its lost power. Like a lot of Somalis, it views the Abdullahi-Ali leadership as a ‘puppet government’ that is servile to a foreign invader that had fought two wars against Somalia in the late 70s and early 80s. Because Ethiopia is regarded as a ‘Christian state’— though more than 40% of the population is Muslim—resistance to Ethiopian occupation is going to assume an even sharper edge. Since the US is also militarily involved — and US intervention has an unpleasant history behind it —one can expect Islamic resistance to reach a crescendo. The ensuing strife and conflict will guarantee that Somalia remains trapped in the turmoil that has plagued the blighted land for more than 15 years.

Seen from this perspective, the UIC had at least brought a degree of law and order to most of Somalia in the 6 months that it was in power. Using Islam as a rallying point, it managed to unite the warring clans which have been the Achilles heel of Somali politics for so long. The UIC also began to adopt some measures against corruption and abuse of power.

But its rigid, dogmatic adherence to an atavistic vision of a virtuous Islamic society alienated quite a lot of Somalis. Like so many other Islamic movements of a similar orientation, it adopted a ‘prohibit and punish’ approach to issues pertaining to personal morality. Nonetheless, even its critics acknow-ledge that apart from its ability to restore law and order, the UIC was determined to protect Somali independence and sovereignty.

It was this assertion of independence on the part of the UIC, which, in the ultimate analysis, piqued the US government. Indeed, right from the beginning of the Cold War era the US had, on various occasions, tried to thwart any attempt by any group, religious or secular, in Somalia and in the whole of the Horn of Africa, to pursue policies that were independent of US interests in the region. Invariably, it would accuse such a group of being ‘pro the Soviet Union’ and subvert its position. After the end of the Cold War, the US sought to use its superpower status in a unipolar world to exercise total dominance over the Horn. Its military intervention in Somalia in 1992 under the guise of the United Nations was part of that endeavor. It failed when Somali militias shot down two US helicopters in October 1993 in the famous ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident that left 18 US servicemen dead. Now the Bush Administration is trying once again to bring Somalia under its control.

Why is the US so set on controlling Somalia and the Horn of Africa? The primary reason is strategic. The Horn provides access to the Red Sea and is a vital link to the Indian Ocean. It explains why the US has an aircraft carrier, the USS Eisenhower, in the region and a military base in Djibouti. But there is also the question of oil. A 1991 World Bank study of the petroleum potential of eight African states for instance “ put Somalia (and Sudan) at the top of the list of prospective commercial oil producers”. It should also be remembered that before Somalia plunged into chaos in 1991, American oil giants such as Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips were involved in oil explorations in an area covering nearly two-thirds of Somalia.

It is mainly because of these two reasons that the Bush Administration does not want an independent minded Islamic group in charge of Somalia. Such a group, needless to say, would not dance to Washington’s tune.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,
President,
International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

15 January 2007.

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ESCALATING THE WAR : THE HEIGHT OF FOLLY

There is widespread opposition to President Bush’s plan to escalate the war in Iraq. The majority of Iraqis are opposed to his plan. The opposition of the Arab Sunni community aside, even advisers to Shiite leaders like Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al- Maliki and the influential Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, have expressed misgivings about the injection of 21,000 additional American troops into Iraq. It is only the leadership of the Kurdish Sunni community which has worked hand in glove with the US government for more than 15 years that appears to support the Bush plan.

It is equally significant that 66% of Americans, according to a recent poll, reject the plan. Media surveys conducted in Europe and various other parts of the world indicate that an even larger percentage of the people are against what Bush is preparing to do in order to ‘secure victory in Iraq’. In this regard, it is important to observe that the majority of Asian leaders are convinced that additional troops and the increased use of force will not bring peace to Iraq or the Middle East.

If there is so much opposition to the Bush plan it is because sensible people everywhere realize that given the quagmire in Iraq the only sane thing to do is to end— not enhance — the occupation. It is occupation which has generated so much resistance among the majority of Sunnis and a big segment of the Shiite population that is responsible for the violence and bloodshed that have devastated Iraq in the last 37 months. The occupation is also the root cause of the Sunni-Shiite conflict since many Arab Sunnis see some Shiite leaders and the police and military that serve them as American collaborators. Even the kidnapping, looting and gangsterism that plague Baghdad today can be traced back to the breakdown in law and order that has followed in the heels of the occupation.

But Bush and the ruling elite in Washington will not end the occupa-tion. The conquest of Iraq is the lynchpin of their diabolical plan to create a ‘new Middle East’ where US and Israeli interests would reign supreme. This is why they are determined to cling on to Iraq whatever the cost and consequences. In fact, the decision to increase troops may even be linked to their yet undisclosed fears about certain possible developments in Iraq in the near future. Is the Washington elite afraid that with Saddam executed, Shiite opposition to US occupation will intensify—hence the need for more soldiers? Is the US strengthening its military position in Iraq because it knows that Israel acting alone or Israel with the backing of the US will soon attempt to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and this could lead to a massive Shiite uprising against the US in Iraq? In other words, is the Bush escalation plan a preemptive move to quell an imminent Shiite revolt which will spell doom for the US in Iraq?

Whatever the hidden motive behind escalation, the people of the world should continue to demand that the US and its allies withdraw from Iraq immediately. They should also demand that the Bush Administration scrap any plan it may have for the building of permanent military bases in Iraq. Most of all, they should demand that US engineered legislation which allows Western oil corporations to reap mammoth profits from the large-scale exploitation of Iraqi oil — the third largest reserves in the world — be abrogated at once.

Chandra Muzaffar

14 January 2007.

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THE SADDAM EXECUTION: MOTIVES AND IMPLICATIONS

The execution of former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, by the US backed Iraqi government was motivated by a variety of factors which have not been highlighted by the mainstream media.

• For the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, who has been heavily criticized in recent months by both friends and foes in Iraq and by his US allies for his inability to handle the ‘insurgency’—resistance would be a more accurate term— issuing Saddam’s death warrant was an attempt to prove that he was tough, capable and decisive.
  
  
• For President Bush who has lost the support of the majority of Americans largely because of the mess he has created in Iraq and whose party was defeated in the recent Congressional Elections, hanging Saddam was an attempt to refurbish his public image.
  
  
• In Bush’s case there may also have been a personal motive. The alleged bid by Saddam to get Bush’s father assassinated in 1993 has always rankled the son. Saddam’s execution was perhaps the revenge he was waiting for.
  
  
• The execution was also desi-gned to please the Israeli leadership who regarded Saddam as a mortal enemy for his uncompromising oppos-ition to Israel and for his unflinching support for the Palestinian cause.
  
  
• The execution was also an attempt by the Bush Adm-inistration to tell Arab and Muslim leaders that unless they submit totally to American and Israeli hegem-ony, they could also meet Saddam’s fate. It was a brazen warning to those who seek to challenge Amer-ican power.
  
  
• At the same time, the Bush Administration hopes that with Saddam executed the mainly Sunni resistance will lose its zeal and vigor and yield to the American-led occupation.
  
  
• There are also elements in Washington and Baghdad who are hoping that Saddam’s execution will enrage his Sunni supporters even more and will lead to a further aggravation of the Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq. If sectarian violence gets worse, the justification for continued American occup-ation will get stronger.

Whatever the motive, it is unlikely that resistance to the American led occupation of Iraq will decline. For what drives the resistance is the fact of occupation itself. As with other people under alien occupation, Iraqis can be expected to continue their struggle until the occupier is defeated and forced to withdraw. If anything, their colossal suffering in occupied Iraq where hundreds of thousands have been killed, where violence is endemic, security is illusory, jobs are scarce and basic amenities are in short supply, has strengthened their resolve to free themselves from the humiliation of occupation.

Indeed, it is quite conceivable that resistance will become stronger now that Saddam is dead. More Shiites may join the resistance since the dominant presence of a dictator who had oppressed them in the past, in the struggle against American occupation had deterred the majority Shiites from playing their part. In fact, Shiite opposition towards occupation has been increasing since the capture of Saddam in December 2003. According to some analysts even a section of the Kurdish community which had also borne the brunt of Saddam’s terrible atrocities especially in Halabja in March 1988, may lend their weight to the resistance movement. What this means is that with Saddam out of the picture, Iraqi resistance to occupation may be entering a new phase.

In this new phase, Iraqi resistance may begin to exhibit some of the characteristics of some of the other resistance movements in the Arab world, notably Lebanon’s Hizbullah and Palestine’s Hamas. Its Islamic orie-ntation may become more pronounced. Even now middle level Baathist leaders and former officers of the now defunct Iraqi armed forces who constitute the vanguard of the resistance to American occupation are generally more Islamic than the top brass of the Saddam government were. For instance, they do not share Saddam’s virulent hostility towards ‘Persians’, which was so evident even as he went to the gallows.

In this regard, it is important to understand that Saddam was the last of the Arab leaders who had built his nationalism on the basis of secularism and socialism which were the essential ingredients of the Baathist ideology that dominated Iraq for more than three decades. Secular socialism as the conduit of Arab nationalism, pioneered by Egypt’s charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser , swept through the Arab world in the fifties and sixties. It has now receded and today defence of the Arab motherland against foreign occupation finds expression through Islam.

For the resistance movement in a post-Saddam Iraq the real challenge is whether Islam as the collective belief system of the vast majority of Iraqis can be harnessed to thwart the well organized plan to exploit Sunni- Shiite differences in order to prevent a united front from emerging in the struggle for liberation from occupation.

Chandra Muzaffar

3 January 2006.

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FUTURE OF IRAQ:THE SPOILS OF WAR
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb

Iraq’s massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. “So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies,” he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq’s oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through “production-sharing agreements” (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world’s two largest producers, is state controlled.

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.

Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, Tony Blair denied the “false claim” that “we want to seize” Iraq’s oil revenues. He said the money should be put into a trust fund, run by the UN, for the Iraqis, but the idea came to nothing. The same year Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, said: “It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil.”

Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals.

Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, said Iraq was being asked to pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability. “They would lose out massively,” he said, “because they don’t have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal.”

Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country’s oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. “It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard,” said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March.

Several major oil companies are said to have sent teams into the country in recent months to lobby for deals ahead of the law, though the big names are considered unlikely to invest until the violence in Iraq abates.

James Paul, executive director at the Global Policy Forum, the international government watchdog, said: “It is not an exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of the population would be opposed to this. To do it anyway, with minimal discussion within the [Iraqi] parliament is really just pouring more oil on the fire.”

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman and a former chief economist at Shell, said it was crucial that any deal would guarantee funds for rebuilding Iraq. “It is absolutely vital that the revenue from the oil industry goes into Iraqi development and is seen to do so,” he said. “Although it does make sense to collaborate with foreign investors, it is very important the terms are seen to be fair.”

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The good news is that the Republicans lost.

The bad news is that the Democrats won.

The burning issue — US withdrawal from Iraq — remains as far from resolution as before.

A clear majority of Americans are opposed to the war and almost all of them would be very happy if the US military began the process of leaving Iraq tomorrow, if not today. The rest of the world would breathe a great sigh of relief and their long-running love affair with the storybook place called “America” could begin to come back to life.

A State Department poll conducted in Iraq this past summer dealt with the population’s attitude toward the American occupation. Apart from the Kurds — who assisted the US military before, during, and after the invasion and occupation, and don’t think of themselves as Iraqis — most people favored an immediate withdrawal, ranging from 56% to 80% depending on the area.

The State Department report added that majorities in all regions except Kurdish areas said that the departure of coalition forces would make them feel safer and decrease violence.

George W. is on record declaring that if the people of Iraq ask the United States to leave, the US will leave. He also has declared that the Iraqis are “not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I were occupied either.”

Yet, despite all this, and much more, the United States remains, with predictions from Pentagon officials that American forces will be in Iraq for years. Large US military bases are being constructed there; they’re not designed as temporary structures. Remember that 61 years after the end of World War II the United States still has major bases in Germany. Fifty-three years after the end of the Korean War the US has tens of thousands of troops in South Korea.

Washington insists that it can’t leave Iraq until it has completed training and arming a police force and army which will keep order. Not only does this inject thousands more armed men — often while in uniform — into the raging daily atrocities, it implies that the United States is concerned about the welfare and happiness of the Iraqi people, a proposition rendered bizarre by almost four years of inflicting upon those same people a thousand and one varieties of hell on earth, literally destroying their ancient and modern civilization. We are being asked to believe that the American military resists leaving because some terrible thing will befall their beloved Iraqi brethren. (“We bomb you because we care about you” ... suitable to be inscribed on the side of a cruise missile.) Even as I write this, on November 14, I read: “An overnight US raid killed six people in mainly-Shia east Baghdad, sparking angry anti-US protests. Thirty died in a US raid on the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi, Iraqi officials said.”

At the same time, the American occupation fuels hostility by the Sunnis toward Shiite “collaborators” with the occupation, and vice-versa. And each attack of course calls for retaliation. And the bodies pile up. If the Americans left, both sides could negotiate and participate in the reconstruction of Iraq without fear of being branded traitors. The Iraqi government would lose its quisling stigma. And Iraq’s security forces would no longer have the handicap of being seen to be working on behalf of foreign infidels against fellow Iraqis.

So why don’t the Yanquis just go home? Is all this not rather odd? Three thousand of their own dead, tens of thousands critically maimed. And still they stay. Why, they absolutely refuse to even offer a timetable for withdrawal. No exit plan. No nothing.

No, it’s not odd. It’s oil.

Oil was not the only motivation for the American invasion and occupation, but the other goals have already been achieved — eliminating Saddam Hussein for Israel’s sake, canceling the Iraqi use of the euro in place of the dollar for oil transactions, expansion of the empire in the middle east with new bases.

American oil companies have been busy under the occupation, and even before the US invasion, preparing for a major exploitation of Iraq’s huge oil reserves. Chevron, ExxonMobil and others are all set to go. Four years of preparation are coming to a head now. Iraq’s new national petroleum law — written in a place called Washington, DC — is about to be implemented. It will establish agreements with foreign oil companies, privatizing much of Iraq’s oil reserves under exceedingly lucrative terms. Security will be the only problem, protecting the oil companies’ investments in a lawless country. For that they need the American military close by.


William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World’s Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com

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THE DE-ZIONIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MIND
By Jean Bricmont

Americans are constantly told that they have to defend themselves against people who “hate them”, but without understanding why they are hated. Is the cause our secular democracy? Our appetite for oil? There are lots of democracies in the world that are far more secular than the United States (Sweden, France...) and lots of places that want to buy oil at the best possible price (China) without arousing any noticeable hatred in the Middle East.

Of course, it is true that, throughout the Third World, Americans and Europeans are often considered arrogant and are not particularly liked. But the level of hatred that leads a large number of people to applaud an event like September 11 is peculiar to the Middle East. Indeed, the main political significance of September 11 did not derive from the number of people killed or even the spectacular achievement of the attackers, but from the fact that the attack was popular in large parts of the Middle East. That much was understood by Americans leaders and infuriated them. Such a level of hatred calls for explanation.

And there can be only one explanation: United States support for Israel. It is indeed Israel that is the main object of hatred, for reasons we shall describe, but since the United States uncritically supports Israel on almost every issue, constantly praises it as “the only democracy in the Middle East” and provides its main financial backing, the result is a “transfer” of hatred.

Why is Israel so hated? The constant stalling of “peace plans” in favor of more settlements and more war aggravates that hatred, but the basic cause lies in the very principles on which that state is build. There are basically two arguments that have justified establishing the State of Israel in Palestine: one is that God gave that land to the Jews, and the other is the Holocaust. The first one is deeply insulting to people who are profoundly religious, like most Arabs, but of another creed. And, for the second, it amounts to making people pay for a crime that they did not commit.

Both arguments are deeply racist, with their claim that it is right for Jews, and only Jews, to set up a state in a land that would obviously be Arab, like Jordan or Lebanon, if not for the slow Zionist invasion. This is illustrated by the “law of return”: any Jew, anywhere, having no connection with Palestine whatsoever, and not suffering from the slightest persecution, can, if he so wishes, emigrate to Israel and easily become a citizen, while the inhabitants who fled in 1948, or their children, cannot. Add to that the fact that a city claimed to be Holy by three religions has become the “eternal capital of the Jewish people” (and only them) and one should start to understand the rage that all this provokes throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

It is precisely this racist aspect that infuriates most Arabs, even if they do not have any personal connection to Palestine (if they live, say, in the French banlieues). This situation delegitimizes the Arab regimes that are impotent in the face of the Zionist enemy and, after the defeat of the region’s two main secular leaders, Nasser and Saddam Hussein (the latter thanks to the US), leads to the rise of religious fundamentalism.

Now, people often find racism far more unacceptable than “mere” economic exploitation or poverty. Consider South Africa: under apartheid, the living conditions of the Blacks were bad but not necessarily much worse than in other parts of Africa (or even in South Africa now). But the system was intri-nsically racist, and that was felt as an outrage to Blacks everywhere, including in the United States. This is why the conflict over Palestine goes beyond the second class status of Israeli Arabs or even the treatment of the Occupied Territories. Even if a Palestinian state were established on the latter, and even if full equality were granted to Israeli Arabs, the wounds of 1948 would not heal quickly. Arab leaders, even religious ones, can of course sign peace agreements with Israel, but they are fragile so long as the Arab population considers them unjust and does not accept them wholeheartedly. Palestine is the Alsace-Lorraine or the Taiwan of the Arab world and the fact that it is impossible to take it back does not mean that it can be forgotten . (I am not arguing here in favour of « wiping Israel off the map », or in favor of a « one state solution » but simply underlining what seems to me to be the root and the depth of the problem. In fact, I am not arguing for any solution partly because none seems to me to be attainable in the short term, but, more fundamentally, because I do not think that outsiders to the Middle East should propose such solutions.)

There is no sign that any of this is understood in Israel by more than a few individuals; if Arabs hate them, this is just another instance of the fact that everybody hates Jews and it only proves that they have to “defend themselves” (i.e. attack others pre-emptively) by any means necessary. That is bad enough, but why isn’t this understood in the United States either? There are traditionally two answers to that: one is that the population is manipulated into supporting Israel by the government, the arms merchants or the oil industry, because Israel is a strategic U.S. ally; the other answer is that the United States is manipulated by the Israel lobby. The idea that Israel is a strategic ally, if by that one means a useful ally (useful to, say, the oil interests, broadly understood), although widely accepted, specially in the Left, does not survive a critical examination. That may have been the case in 1967 or even during the Cold War period, although one could argue that, even then, the Arab states were attracted by the Soviet Union only because it might support them in their struggle against Israel, albeit ineffectively. But both in 1991 and in 2003, the United States attacked Iraq without any help from Israel, even begging Israel not to intervene in 1991, in order for its Arab coalition not to collapse. Or consider the post-2003 occupation of Iraq, and suppose that the goal of that occupation is control over oil. In what sense does Israel help in that respect? Everything it does (the currents attacks on Gaza and Lebanon for example) further alienates the Arabs, and U.S. support for Israel makes the control of oil harder, not easier. Even the Iraqi parliament, Malaki and Sistani, who are the closest to allies that the United States can find there, condemn Israel’s actions.

Finally, just imagine that the United States would make a 180 turn and suddenly side with the Palestinians, as they did with the Kosovars against the Serbs—who, by the way, were, like the Israelis, richer and more “Western” than their Albanian adversaries . Such a change of policies is by no means impossible : when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the US supported the invasion by providing most of Indonesia’s weapons. Yet, 25 years later, the US supported, or at least did not oppose, East Timor’s accession to independence.

What effect would that have? Can anyone doubt that such a change of policy would facilitate U.S. access to oil fields and help it gain strategic allies (if any were still needed) throughout the Muslim world? In the Middle East, the main charge against the United States is that it is pro-Israel, because it lets itself be “manipulated by the Jews”. Therefore, if Washington switched sides, there would be no more basis for hostility to U.S. presence, including its control over oil. Thus the notion of Israel as “strategic ally” makes no sense.

This leads us to the “Israel lobby” answer, which is closer to the truth, but not the whole truth. To get a complete picture, one has to understand why the lobby works as effectively as it does, and that depends on factors lying outside the actions of the lobby itself. After all, the militant Zionists constituting the lobby are a minority among Jews, who themselves form a small minority of the American population. The Israel lobby does not work like other lobbies, for example, the arms and the oil industry lobbies (which is one of the reasons why it is easy to dismiss it as irrelevant, as long as one does not understand how it really exerts its influence).

Of course, like the latter, the Israel lobby does fund electoral campaigns and its power derives in part from its ability to target people in Congress who deviate from its “line”. But if that was all, it could easily be defeated ­indeed, there are other sources of electoral funding, the big industrial lobbies for example, and if the pro-Israel candidates could be shown to be paid to serve the interests of another State, their opponents could denounce the people who receive money from the lobby as some sort of agents of a foreign power. Just imagine a pro-French, pro-Chinese or pro-Japanese lobby that would try to significantly influence the US Congress. Certainly, money alone cannot suffice.
What protects the Israel lobby is the fact that anyone who would denounce an opponent funded by the Lobby as a quasi-agent of a foreign power would immediately be accused of anti-Semitism. In fact, imagine that Big Business is unhappy with the current U.S. policies (as it well may be) and wants to change them—how could they do it? Any criticism of Lobby influence on U.S. policy would immediately trigger the anti-Zionism-is-anti-Semitism accusation.

So the strength of the Israel lobby resides in part in this second line of defense, which itself is linked to its influence on the media. But even that could easily be defeated — not all the media are under the lobby’s influence, and, more importantly, the media is not all-powerful: in Venezuela, it is anti-Chavez, but Chavez regularly wins elections. In France, the media were overwhelmingly in favour of the “yes” vote to the referendum on the European Constitution, yet the “no” won. The problem, and that is why the Israel lobby is so effective, is that it expresses a world view that is accepted too easily by too many Americans. After all, nothing could be more ridiculous than accusing someone of anti-Semitism because he wants or claims to put America’s interests above those of Israel. Yet, the accusation is likely to be effective, but only because years of ideological brainwashing have predisposed people to consider U.S. and Israeli interests as identical — although instead of “interests” one speaks of “values”.

Associated with this identification comes a systematically hostile view of the Arab and Muslim world, which both increases the lobby’s effectiveness and is in part the result of its propaganda. Despite all the talk about anti-racism and “political correctness”, there is an almost total lack of understanding of the Arab viewpoint on Palestine, and, in particular, of the racist nature of the problem. It is this triple layer of control (selective funding, the anti-Semitism card, or rather canard, and the interiorization) that gives the lobby its peculiar strength. (And that is also why it is easy to dismiss its strength by saying, for instance, that, obviously, Jews don’t control America. Sure, but direct control is not the way it works.)

People who think that it is the arms or the oil industry that are running the show in Washington as far as foreign policy is concerned, should at least answer the following question: how does it work? There is no evidence whatsoever that the oil industry, for example, pushed for the Iraq war, the threats against Iran or the attack on Lebanon . (There is a lot of evidence that the Israel lobby pushed for the Iraq war; see Jeff Blankfort, A War for Israel.They are supposed to act secretly, of course, but where is the evidence that they do? And if they is no evidence, even no indirect evidence, how does one know? Profits from the war, at least for major corporations, haven’t materialized yet, and there are many indications that the U.S. economy will suffer a lot from war-related expenses and the associated deficits. On the other hand, it is enough to open any mainstream U.S. newspaper or TV and read or hear opinions expressed by Zionists calling for more war. War needs war propaganda and a supporting ideology, and the Zionists provide it, while none of this is offered by Big Business in general or the oil industry in particular.

One may also think of historical precedents, like the China lobby (made of post-1949 Chinese exiles and ex-missionaries, supported by their domestic churches) in the 1950’s and 1960’s. That lobby led the United States to maintain the ridiculous claim that a billion people were represented by a government (Taiwan) that had no control over them whatsoever. It was also very influential in bringing on the Vietnam war. Whose interests were they serving? The ones of the American capitalists? But the latter make huge profits in post-Nixon recognized China. And the same is true in Vietnam.

In fact both countries, as well as most of Asia, were anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist, as well as anti-feudal (partly because the feudal structures did not allow them to resist foreign invasions). But they were anti-capitalist (in the rhetoric, since capitalism barely existed there) mostly because their aggressors —the West—were capitalist. So that the main lesson to be drawn from the tragic history of the China lobby is that it held, during decades, the US policies hostage to revanchist feudal and clerical forces that were alien to mainstream America, and actually harmful to capitalist America. But they worked to the extent that their ideology— mixing fear with racist contempt for the “Asian mind” — was in sync with Western prejudices. Replace the China lobby by the Israel one and the Asian mind by the Arab one and you get a fair picture of what is going on right now in the U.S.-Middle East relation.

What should the Left do? Well, simple: treat Israel as it did South Africa and attack the Lobby. The reason Israel acts as it does is that it feels strong and that, in turn, is for two reasons: one is its “all-powerful army” (currently being tested in Lebanon, not conclusively yet); the other is the almost complete control over Washington policy-making, specially the Congress. Peace in the Middle East can only come when this feeling of Israeli superiority is shattered, and Americans have a great responsibility in doing half of the job, the one concerning kneejerk U.S. support.

Now, there are, in principle, two ways to do that: one is to appeal to American generosity, the other is to appeal to their self-interest. Both ways should be pursued, but the latter is not enough emphasized by the Left . (See Michael Neumann, What is to be said ?, for a discussion of the ethical aspects of that choice.) That’s probably because self-interest does not appear to be “noble” and because the pursuit of the “U.S. national interest” has all too often been interpreted as overthrowing prog- ressive governments, buying elections etc. But, if the alternative to self-interest is a form of religious fanaticism, then self-interest is far preferable: if the Germans had followed self-interested policies in the 1930’s, even imperialist policies, but rational ones, World War II could have been avoided. Also, if the United States were to distance itself from Israel, it would pursue policies opposed to the traditional ones, and which are far more humane. The other problem is that a large part of the Right (from Buchanan to Brzezinski) correctly sees American interests as being opposed of those of Israel, and the Left (understandably) does not like to make common cause with such people. But if a cause is just (and, in this case, urgent) it does not become less just because unsavory people endorse it (the same argument applies to genuine anti-Semitic hostility to Israel). The worst thing that the Left can do is to leave the monopoly of a just cause to the Right.

The Left cannot expect the American people to change radically overnight, abandon religious fundamentalism, give up oil addiction or embrace socialism. But a change of perspective in the Middle East is possible: the strength of the lobby is also its weakness, namely the naked king effect-everybody fears it, but the only reason to fear it is that everybody around us fears it. Left alone, it is powerless. To change that, one should systematically defend every politician, every columnist, every teacher, who is targeted by the lobby for his or her views or statements, irrespective of their general political outlook (to take an analogy, act as civil libertarians do with respect to free speech).

When people in the antiwar movement divert attention from Israel by blaming Big Oil or Big Business for the wars (specially the one in Lebanon, or the threats against Iran) one should demand that they provide some evidence for their claims. Challenge all the apologists or excuse makers for Israel or its lobby within progressive circles. When politicians and journalists claim that Israel and the United States have common interests, ask what services exactly has Israel rendered to the United States recently. Of course one can always point to some (minor) services; but, then, ask them what a cold-blooded cost-benefit analysis would reveal and why such an analysis is impossible to undertake publicly. If they speak of common values (the fallback position), provide a list of discriminatory Israeli laws for non-Jews.

Rolling back the lobby would necessitate a change of the American mentality with respect to the people of the Middle East, and to Islam, like ending the Vietnam War required a change in the way Asians were looked at. But that alone would have a greatly humanizing effect on American culture.

It is true that a change in U.S. policy with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict would change nothing about traditional imper-ialism— the United States would still support traditional elites everywhere, and press countries to provide a “favorable investment climate”. But the conflict in the Middle East, involving Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, has all the aspects of a religious war-with Islam on one side and Zionism as a secular Western religion on the other. And wars of religion tend to be the most brutal and uncontrollable of all wars. What is at stake in the de-Zionization of the American mind is not only the fate of the unfortunate inhabitants of Palestine but also unspeakable miseries for the people of that region and maybe of the rest of the world. The ultimate irony in all this is that the fate of much of the world depends of the American people exercizing their right to self-determination, which, of course, they should.


Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium. He is a member of the Brussells Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, will be published by Monthly Review Press.

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