| Issue 20 Vol I, July 31, 2006 | Archive |
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West and the World Peace
American forces have not always succeeded. They have tasted defeat in several countries, Vietnam being not the only one. Yet the successive American governments have used every trick of subterfuge, blackmail, political chicanery and even physical elimination to mould the countries according their own economic and political exigencies. CIA and the multinational corporations have been the tools, besides the forces and the bombs. These are not just allegations or figment of imagination, but research and books by serious scholars from the American universities go to establish this charge without an iota of doubt. American with its rich contribution to science and technology in every sphere of human activity would have been the world leader in any case. What was this destruction needed for? Perhaps to sell arms and ammunition when it could sell technology and education, health care and thus take care of the welfare of the people. It could have made huge money and yet won the hearts and minds of the world public. But perhaps its huge multinational corporations would not have become filthily rich. Then worshippers of mammon would not have been very happy either.
Global Dominance and its costs Here is what Americans themselves, of course, not that plainly are saying. American Progress [<progress@americanprogressaction.org>] in its latest assessment summed up. U.S. policy in the Middle East "is the basic test of America's capacity to exercise global leadership," former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi said. If the United States does not succeed in its Middle East challenge, he argued, "The U.S. will lose its capacity to lead." President Bush does not grasp this reality. Nearly two weeks of spiraling violence passed before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was dispatched to the region for meetings in Beirut, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. Her trip ended in Rome, where "perhaps the most stark aspect" of the gathering of diplomats was "how isolated the United States appears." Rice has repeatedly stated the administration's refusal to accept the "status quo ante," the "old Middle East"; she sees in the current crisis the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." That means more people die, better would the world be. Same logic was available in abundance in Iraq earlier. There were no weapons of mass destruction and no hand of Saddam Hussein once a protégé of America in September 11 bombing of New York and Washington. Yet America was determined to ‘liberate’ Iraq. It brought a puppet democracy and see how it lies in ruins with thousands killed millions homeless and maimed. There is as yet neither any realization nor effort with a new Middle East policy, to replace the one that helped foster so much of the current instability. Instead, the Bush administration has "stuck to its playbook" during the crisis, "giving a tacit blessing" to the escalating violence "and maintaining a studied silence: We do not negotiate with bad guys like Syria and Iran." The result: Rice's visit concluded "without any plan to end the escalation, restore order, and put all the parties back on the road to security, stability, and peace." American Progress.org also writes that “Stretching back decades, Republican and Democratic administrations have seen a vital United States interest in working aggressively with the international community to contain violence in the Middle East. Former President Clinton urged yesterday, "It's important for us to get some kind of ceasefire now." The Bush administration has rejected this approach. In Rome, Rice bucked the "entreaties of nearly all of her European and Arab counterparts" to push for a ceasefire. Her basic position -- "We won't call for a cease fire unless we can be sure the fighting won't ever start up again" -- is ideologically-driven, and signals that the U.S. is "willing to push ahead with their vision even at great sacrifice of political stability and human life." Similarly “amidst talk of "pushing forward to the new Middle East," the Bush administration appears to be unaware that "Hamas and Hezbollah are the new Middle East, and Washington's democratic reform program for the Arab world helped install them," as Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher, a former senior Mossad officer, observes. Dealing with this new scenario may require new strategies, Alpher added, such as using diplomatic advances in Syria to "isolate Iran and create a buffer between Iran and Lebanon." During her trip, Rice pressed heavily for an "international military force to be deployed in southern Lebanon under the auspices of the United Nations." But her belated, limited diplomatic effort has made it extremely difficult to marshal the international support necessary to sustain such a force. Indeed, advocates of engaging Syria argue that Syria's involvement "is the only way to reassure Lebanon and Hezbollah and to ensure the welfare of the international force in the making." Rice's failure to bring about a plan to restore order directly impacts U.S. national security. As the crisis grows, it "strengthens anti-Americanism worldwide and fuels radicalism in the Arab and Muslim world." Assessing Arab media coverage, one analyst found that in "the last few days, the main trend has been unmistakable: an increasing focus on the United States as the villain" of the conflict. The crisis also has the potential to reverse "hard-earned gains in the region, such as fledgling democracies," in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, which the United States has worked to nurture. Additionally, the attacks on Lebanese Shiites have "inflamed the Shia majority in Iraq -- the community preventing the total meltdown" of U.S. efforts. The Financial Times notes that "Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, modeled on Hizbollah, which fought alongside it in the 2004 siege of Najaf, is itching to launch a new uprising. Even Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of the Shia who has held the Iraqi ring, is reportedly on the verge of withdrawing his tacit but vital support for the American project." President Bush has repeatedly emphasized addressing the "root causes" of the escalating violence. He has made no mention, however, of the war in Iraq, which has dramatically expanded the influence of Hezbollah's sponsor Iran while constraining the U.S. capacity to play its historic role in regional stabilization. Iraq has sapped "billions of dollars, international prestige, diplomatic leverage, intelligence assets, the lives of thousands of soldiers (and the health of tens of thousands more)," and severely undermined American moral authority. The humanitarian crisis in the region is growing. UNICEF director Ann Veneman estimated yesterday that roughly 700,000 Lebanese, 45 percent of them children, have been displaced by the fighting, a number that is "growing every day by the tens of thousands," according to U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland. More than 600 Lebanese have been killed in the air strikes, almost all civilians. In Israel, hotels are packed with thousands of civilians who have fled their homes in fear of Hezbollah missiles, more than 2,500 of which "have landed on Israeli towns since the start of the fighting." At least 42 people have been killed in Israel, and "the Israeli army years. The threat of further escalation is severe. "Hezbollah militants still control the territory from which they have been launching missiles at northern Israel," and are "still husbanding thousands of rockets," meaning they "could continue its bombardments for weeks or even months." Meanwhile, Israeli officials "seem ready to commit ground forces for at least weeks, if not months," as analysts say defeating Hezbollah's military forces "would take far more than the thousands of Israeli soldiers now deployed and require a sizable chunk of Israel's military firepower, as well as a commitment to fight for as long as it takes." The Wall Street Journal reports, "In both camps there is a fear of being sucked into protracted combat that would evoke painful memories of the previous occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000." Without a serious shift in U.S. policy, this fear is justified. John Pilger wrote last year in New Statesman offered hope about the new rising international coalition of people worldwide. He wrote:” These forces are part of a movement against inequality and poverty and war that has arisen in the past six years and is more diverse, more enterprising, more internationalists and more tolerant of difference than anything in my lifetime. It is a movement unburdened by a western liberalism that believes it represents a superior form of life; the wisest know this is colonialism by another name. The wisest also know that just as the conquest of Iraq is unravelling, so a whole system of domination and impoverishment can unravel, too.” LET US GO WITH THAT. |
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FOR
the past nearly hundred years, the American political leadership has been
obsessed with the idea to lead and mould the world in its fashion. The
ambition was writ large much before the First World War. The Second World
War saw it well manifested when after having defeated the then imperial
powers, Germany and Japan, it did not hesitate to rain atom bombs on
innocent people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Killing of innocent Japanese,
particularly when Japan had conceded defeat did not matter to the new war
lords as they wanted to show the world their new weapon, the atom bomb and
its lethal impact. Ever since then, the bombs have rained in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Congo, Nicaragua, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq besides
host of other countries. The result has been that the 20th century has been
the bloodiest century in human history. Several million people have perished
in these man made wars where America has been a key player. 
There is
great deal of duplicity, narcissism and dissembling propaganda of these
rulers. Superlatives are plentiful as to their humanitarian intent while the
divisions of humanity into worthy and unworthy victims govern the news.
Tony Blair announced in 2001 his famous campaign to "re-order the world"
with the promise: "To the Afghan people, we make this commitment, we will
not walk away... we will work with you to make sure [a way is found] out of
the poverty that is your miserable existence." The Blair government had just
taken part in the conquest of Afghanistan, in which as many as 20,000
civilians had died. “Of all the great humanitarian crises in living memory,
no country suffered more and none has been helped less. Just three per cent
of all international aid spent in Afghanistan has been for reconstruction,
84 per cent is for the US-led military "coalition" and the rest are crumbs
for emergency aid,” wrote John Pilger, writer and celebrated journalist.
What is true about Afghanistan is truer about Iraq where the real war was
for its oil.