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May 13, 2002
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
May 10, 2002
Lisa Taraki
In Defense
of Sanctions
Against Israel
Jack McCarthy
Snitch Envy: Hitchens, Brock and
Whitaker Chambers
John Jonik
Tobacco
and Teens: Criminalizing the Victiims
Vijay Prashad
Fettered Histories:
Tariq Ali and Ahmed Rashid
on Islam
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Analyst Details
The Disastrous Foreign
Policies of the United State
Omar Barghouti
Israel's Best Interest
May 9, 2002
Alex Lynch
American
Mainstream Media:
Institutionalized Subjectivity
Alexander Cockburn
The Armey Plan:
Palestine to Ft. Worth?
May 8, 2002
James
Masterson
Hysteria
and Panic
About France
Robert Fisk
The Solution to this Filthy War: Foreign
Occupation
Edward
Hammond
and Jan van Aken
Pentagon
Pushed for Offensive BioWeapons Development
David Vest
From Ground Zero to the Bronx
May 7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Bone
Apart:
The Graveyard of Napoleon's Defeated Army
Philip
Farruggio
Muffler
Shop Medicine
Norman
Madarasz
French
Elections:
Pandora's Ballot
Tom Turnipseed
A Travesty of Justice
May 6, 2002
Fran Schor
Invasion
of Iraq:
Coming Soon
Dave Marsh
Love Hurts
John Chuckman
The
Paradoxes of Israel
Rep. Ron Paul
End Corporate Welfare, Pull
the Plug on the Ex-Im Bank
Hussein
Ibish
Devastation
Only Feeds Resistance to Israeli Rule
May 5, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
High and Dry in the Mojave
May 4, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Sharon
the Merciless
and Arafat the Corrupt
Sam Bahour
New United States of Israel
Alexander
Cockburn
Extreme
Solutions:
Priests and Palestinians
May 3, 2002
Arundhati Roy
Democracy and
Religious Fascism
Wayne
Madsen
Dispatch
from Paris:
Le Pen's Strange Coalition
Yigal Bronner
A Journey to Beit Jalla
CounterPunch
Wire
Otto
Reich Named to Board of School of the Americas
John Troyer
Hatemongers Try to Cleanse History:
Gays and 9/11
John Stauber
Big
Food/Tobacco/Booze
Attacks "Mad Cow" Authors
Kathleen Christison
Before There Was Terrorism
Resources:
100s of Links
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The New Crusade:
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By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
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A Pocket Guide to
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May
13, 2002
US Mideast Power Plays
by Robert Jensen and
Rahul Mahajan
For all the talk of a "special relationship"
between the United States and Israel, it's clear that for American
policymakers there's nothing particularly special about their
support for Israel or rejection of Palestinian rights.
For all the talk in Washington about
peace in the Middle East, it's clear that American policymakers
are not much concerned about peace.
Instead, the primary aim of U.S. policy
in the Middle East is U.S. dominance over the region and its
oil resources, through support for regimes that play our game
and through our ever-increasing military presence.
To the degree that U.S. policymakers
believe backing Israeli conquest and aggression in
Palestine advances U.S. long-term business interests, support
for Israel continues. To the degree that peace helps solidify
U.S. control, peace is acceptable.
But U.S. policy is driven neither by
unquestioned support for Israel nor concern for people's suffering
in conflicts. Any hope for real peace requires getting past this
rhetoric to the reality of U.S. policy.
That reality is clear: The central principle
of every U.S. administration since the end of World War II has
been that the resources of the region do not truly belong to
the people of the region, but instead exist for the benefit of
Americans.
It is not simply a question of who owns
the oil, but who controls the flow of oil and oil profits. Even
if the United States were energy self-sufficient, U.S. elites
would seek to dominate the Middle East for the leverage it brings
in world affairs, especially over the economies of our primary
competitors (Europe and Japan), which are more heavily dependent
on Middle Eastern oil.
One component of this policy is support
for the oil-rich countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Saudi rulers
take their cut of the profits, channeling what remains into investments
in the West and the purchase of U.S. weapons. In exchange, Saudi
Arabia -- a monarchy that could not exist independently -- gets
U.S. protection.
In this system, Israel is a key pillar
of U.S. strategy. Especially after its impressive military victory
over the Arab states in 1967, Israel was a hammer that was used
to smash Arab nationalism, which could have upset the system
of weak, fragmented client regimes that the United States favors.
Israel serves as a local cop on the beat, in the terminology
of the Nixon Doctrine, and an integral part of the U.S. military-intelligence
complex in that part of the world. These roles became especially
important after the Iranian revolution in 1979, when the U.S.
lost its other main base in the region.
Israel also serves as a convenient foil
for the United States. Even though the United States has exercised
tremendous, repressive control over the region, until recently
the brunt of Arab anger was always borne by Israel, with the
United States representing itself to the Arabs as a friend. The
U.S.-backed Arab regimes use this foil as well, diverting the
anger of the so-called "Arab street" away from those
states' corruption and despotism, to Israel.
This analysis is often rebuffed by pointing
to the frequent tensions between the United States and countries
in the region, including allies. How is it that these nations
are our clients when they seem so unruly?
This simply reflects the complexity of
maintaining control in such a volatile region. It is common practice
for empires to set up client regimes in a region and then play
them off each other, which not surprisingly produces tension,
especially when the governments are not representative of their
people. That's what U.S. diplomatic and military officials are
paid to do -- manage the tensions, always keeping an eye on the
ultimate goal.
U.S. control -- not peace -- is that
goal. That is why policymakers were happy to see Iraq and Iran
at war throughout the 1980s and gave various kinds of covert
support to both sides. Never mind the millions killed -- it kept
the two regional powers at each other's throats, and hence weakened.
In Palestine, if the United States were
serious about promoting peace it would have long ago joined the
international consensus for a political settlement built on a
viable state for the Palestinians and security for Israel. Instead,
it has long blocked that consensus, such as when it vetoed a
1976 U.N. Security Council resolution that offered something
much like the Saudi plan being touted today as a solution.
U.S. leaders don't mind peace, so long
as it is within a system that doesn't threaten U.S. control.
Yes, a Middle East in a constant state of tension -- either engaged
in war or on the verge of war -- has been dangerous. But that's
a price the United States has been willing to pay.
These points are crucial to answering
the claim that U.S. leaders simply do Israel's bidding. Of course
there are well-organized and well-funded groups in the United
States lobbying very effectively for Israel. And of course U.S.
politicians feel pressure from vocal constituents who support
Israel.
But those domestic political realities
alone do not drive U.S. financial and diplomatic support that
allows Israel to continue to defy international law in its 35-year
military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon has skillfully used the "war on terrorism"
banner to expand further the level of violence against Palestinians
that the United States will accept, and the expressions of reflexive
support for Israel in Congress have never been stronger.
But in the end, the U.S. policymakers
shape foreign policy to benefit U.S. elite economic interests,
not those of another country.
The inevitable conclusion to draw from
this is that United States cannot be a positive force in the
Middle East without a fundamental shift in goals: The United
States must replace its quest for control with a commitment to
peace AND justice, under international law.
Never has it been more crucial that Americans
understand this. While Israel steps up the violence in Palestine,
the Bush administration plots a war on Iraq. U.S. officials tell
us Iraq presents a grave threat to the world, though other nations
(including Kuwait) don't feel threatened and all the world (save
Israel and the always-loyal Tony Blair) rejects the U.S. plans.
It's not that other countries support
Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, but that they see that a war
on Iraq will deepen U.S. control over the region at the expense
of the Iraqi people. As U.S. officials talk about bringing democracy
and freedom to Iraq, they search for an Iraqi general who can
be trusted to follow U.S. orders if put in charge. All this after
more than a decade of economic sanctions -- demanded by the United
States, largely to break Iraqi control of its own oil -- that
have killed a half-million Iraqi children (according to a comprehensive
UNICEF study).
The more the United States overplays
its hand in the Middle East, the more the rest of the world sees
clearly U.S. intentions. The question is, can we the American
people see the same, and demand of our government a policy geared
toward justice not domination.
Robert Jensen
is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas and author
of Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.
Rahul Mahajan serves on the National Board of Peace Action
and is author of The
New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism. Both are members
of the Nowar Collective.
They can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
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