" ... under the sky
without hope
the self inside me dies ...
I will always be from nowhere
Without a face, without a history
from nowhere."
"Traveler without Luggage" by Abdul-Wahab Al-Bayyati
05/29/07 "ICH" --- - It's hard to know what Bush hopes to accomplish by backing the bloody siege of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, but one thing is certain; things are never as they seem. In an interview on Democracy Now last week, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh stated that, Fatah al-Islam---the group of Sunni extremists inside the camp--were getting material support from the Saudis, the Bush administration and members of the Lebanese political establishment.
So, the Bush administration is supporting terrorism?
That's right. Sy Hersh put it like this:
"The idea was to provide them (Fatah al-Islam) with some arms and some money and some basic equipment so -- these are small units, a couple hundred people. There were three or four around the country given the same help covertly, the goal being they would be potential enemies of Hezbollah in case of warfare".
But if Fatah-al-Islam is an American-Saudi creation than why is the Bush administration shipping weapons to Lebanon to help kill them? Is this is another example of "blowback"---the unintended consequences of a misguided foreign policy?
Yes and no.
While it is true that the US uses terrorist organizations to further its policy objectives (The US supported Bin Laden in Afghanistan, the KLA in Kosovo, the Mujahedin Klaq in Iran) the situation in Lebanon is a bit more complex.
Fatah al-Islam is comprised of Sunni radicals who were recruited from the other Gulf States to counterbalance Hezbollah. Now, it appears, they have outlived their usefulness and the Lebanese warlords have decided to eliminate them.
According to independent journalist Franklin Lamb, who is reporting from the battered Bedawi refugee camp, the charges against the group are purely fabricated. "There was no bank robbery" and "no heads were cut off". The allegations in the western press were merely a pretext for restarting the fighting. The siege of Nahr al-Bared is probably just Phase 2 of Israel's 34 Day War--- a conflict in which "Israel's air force, armed with U.S.-manufactured and -fueled F-16s, went on a rampage with more than 14 combat missions every single hour of the war, destroying, among other things, 73 bridges, 400 miles of roads, 25 gas stations, 900 commercial structures, two hospitals, 350 schools and 15,000 Lebanese homes." (Dahr Jamail)
The US-Israeli goals in Lebanon have never really changed. Israel wants a reliable client to its North and access to Lebanon's water supplies. They also want to crush their main enemy, Hezbollah, the Shiite resistance organization which has routed the IDF twice in the last 15 years.
Bush, on the other hand, is trying to destabilize the entire region using the madcap neocon strategy of "creative destruction". He thinks that if he can erase the traditional borders and create a fragmented Middle East, the transnational corporations will be able to control the region's vast resources.
Washington's allies in Beirut like the idea, too. Walid Jumblat, Sa'ad Hariri and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora"all believe that the outbreak of violence will only strengthen them politically.
Siniora "The Lionhearted"
It's interesting to watch how eager Siniora is to bomb of a defenseless refugee camp, when just months ago he was too afraid to deploy troops to the south of Lebanon to fight the invading Israeli army. Why is that?
Siniora showed his true colors during the 34 Day War. At one point he was photographed sipping tea with Condi Rice while Lebanese civilians in the south were being pelted with American-made bombs dropped from American-made F-16s. The Prime Minister has proved that he is every bit as worthy of Washington's praise as Karzai in Afghanistan or Abbas in Palestine.
But there's another reason for the present siege of Nahr al-Bared besides Siniora's newfound courage, that is, NATO wants to clear the area for another military airbase.
According to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Diyar:
"NATO has decided to join the Lebanese territories to North-African & African coast military region, to establish Military airbases". ... .
"American-German-Turkish military delegation toured and surveyed Akkar region, reported to the NATO headquarter in Brussels, mentioning that the military bases will contribute to the development and the economic recovery in the region, advising the government to focus on the financial aspect and positive reflection on the population of the region, giving the bases a name "Lebanese Army and Security training centre".
So, it looks like northern Lebanon has been chosen as the site for further NATO expansion in the Middle East. That means that NATO-planners must have agreed on a credible justification for evacuating the people who presently occupy the land. That's where Fatah al Islam comes in. The hobgoblin of terrorism always provides the perfect excuse for state sanctioned violence---in this case the group is being used to conceal a massive ethnic cleansing operation.
Iraqi poet and blogger Layla Anwar made these comments about the situation in Iraq, but they can be easily applied to Nahr al-Bared as well. She says:
"If you want to reconstruct a country, you need to eliminate its people and start anew right?
Like restoring the virginity to the land so you can build better and stronger fortresses. A brand new Iraq with a brand new population. A total Babel makeover.
You know, like the ones you see on these American TV reality shows. Revamped, relooked, redone...beyond recognition".
(Layla Anwar, "Aliens in Babel" An Arab Woman's Blues)
Anwar is right. The siege of Nahr al-Bared is an attempt "to eliminate people and start anew" by pushing 30 or 40 thousand Palestinians out of their homes and onto the streets so their foreign overlords can "build a stronger fortress".
It is a tragedy and the Bush administration has only added to the crime by providing arms and equipment to the Lebanese Army.
According to the U.K. Guardian:
"The United States has sent planeloads of arms and ammunition for the Lebanese army, as tension grows around the besieged refugee camp in the north of the country. The weapons were welcomed by members of the Lebanese government, who said they wanted the army equipped "to the teeth" in the face of threats of renewed violence."
The siege of Nahr al-Bared follows a familiar pattern that we have seen in Gaza, Falluja, Tel Afar and Samarra. The camp has been surrounded and cut off, snipers have been positioned on the rooftops, civilian areas have been shelled with impunity, and the bodies of the dead have been left to rot on the streets.
Sound familiar? It should. These are the basic contours of the Bush Doctrine as it is applied to the (remaining) independent states in the Middle East. The options for the victims are always the same: One can either pack up and find shelter in another filthy refugee-hovel or stay home and die. There's no other choice.
It's easy to see why the number of refugees in the region has swollen to more than 4 million people in just a few years. Most of them are the victims of US aggression in Iraq, but the trend is now spreading to Lebanon. Is this what Condi Rice meant when she announced the "birth pangs" of a "New Middle East"---a humanitarian crisis extending from the Mediterranean to the Caucuses?
Many people are wondering why the United Nations has remained silent while Bush ships more weapons to the frontlines and the Lebanese Army continues to pound away at the most densely populated area in the Middle East. Is it because the UN has become a rubber stamp for US-Israeli colonial ambitions in the region?
Face it; the UN's role is to feign concern for human rights while the US and its allies pursue their imperial goals. It's only gotten worse under the newly-appointed Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon. Moon has shown that he's incapable of being evenhanded and that he's little more than an American stooge. With less than a year in office, his credibility is already shot.
The only bright spot in this latest American-made catastrophe is the courage demonstrated by the victims. As Franklin Lamb says in his latest article "Inside Nahr el-Bared: Another Waco in the making":
"Amazing examples of humanity are happening here. There are many family connections between the two camps. Kids distribute and water bread when it arrives in cars from Beirut and elsewhere. Young girls picking up and caring for babies of people they don't know, helping old people find a place to sit and listen to them when they tell of what happened. I could be wrong but I have rarely witnessed the solidarity among people as I see here with the Palestinians. Clean, smart, patient, charming, funny, and caring toward one another-determined to return to Palestine."
Even though they've lost their homes, the Palestinians have raised themselves above the squalor and cruelty of their predicament and shown selflessness and bravery. That's a powerful statement about the affects of culture and national identity.
As the Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish says in his poem "Passport":
"My nationality resides in the hearts of all the people,
so go ahead and remove my passport!"
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: [email protected]
Friday, 1 June , 2007 12:27:00
Reporter: Eleanor Hall
ABC
ELEANOR HALL: A US military analyst who's served in the armed forces and has written on international affairs for more than two decades, is issuing a warning today about the collapse of the United States as a superpower.
In his latest book, The Mess they Made: the Middle East after Iraq, Gwynne Dyer says there's no doubt that the US will withdraw its troops from Iraq once President George W. Bush leaves office.
But he predicts that already that war has set in motion events that will radically transform not only the Middle East but the role of the United States in the world.
Gwynne Dyer is in Sydney this week and he joined me earlier in the World Today studio.There've been a series of conflicts in the Middle East over the last 40 years, why do you see this latest war in Iraq as likely to be so transformative for the region?
GWYNNE DYER: Well the Americans actually have never committed troops in the Middle East, never actually fought a war in the Middle East, the United States, before. I think this is having an impact on the American public, comparable to the impact on the American public in the Vietnam War though the casualties are far lower this time. So now, there is developing, a Middle Eastern allergy in American public opinion, rather similar to the South East Asian allergy that you had by the end of the 1960's.
That is transformative because if America is not there enforcing the status quo, the status quo probably collapses. It is very old and shoddy. The regimes of the Arab world, with zero exceptions, except for Iraq, where the Americans overthrew Saddam, have all been in power for at least forty years.
They're all dictatorships or absolute monarchies, most of them are corrupt beyond imagining. So this is a very unstable status quo, maintained by American subsidies, American troops, American guarantees, and when those are withdrawn, I think that there will be very large changes in the Middle East.
ELEANOR HALL: You're certain that all of those will be withdrawn, not just the US troops, but the US subsidies as well?
GWYNNE DYER: Not all and not right away, but enough to create a momentum, in which Congress will be reluctant to vote new funds, Congress will be very suspicious about new commitments to support Arab regimes, and meanwhile the momentum in the streets in the Arab world will be moving very rapidly in the favour of the revolutionaries. And that's what they are, after all, the Islamists, after all, are political revolutionaries, they're not just religious fanatics.
ELEANOR HALL: So what will be the shape of the Middle East at that point?
GWYNNE DYER: I think that you're going to see some, I can't tell you which ones, but some Arab regimes fall in the next five years, fall to Islamists of various variety. Some of them perhaps very radical, some of them less so.
ELEANOR HALL: So what would this mean for terrorism in the West
GWYNNE DYER: I think it would drop. I mean the terrorism in the West has two sources, really, first of all the actual 9/11 attacks were a strategic move by a revolutionary Arab organisation, al-Qaeda, to trick the United States into invading Muslim countries. If you pull the troops out of the Middle East, and the West is no longer occupying Muslim countries, I think the wind goes out of the sails of that particular interpretation.
ELEANOR HALL: There's not a danger that having Islamist republics in the Middle East might inspire terrorism around the world?
GWYNNE DYER: No, I don't see why, because I mean, once they're in power, what do they need to bother us for?
ELEANOR HALL: You suggest that the Iraq war could also transform the role of the US in the world, that it's actually done far more damage to US power and prestige than the Vietnam War. What are you predicting for the US?
GWYNNE DYER: Well, think about the Vietnam War for a moment. The United States suffered a humiliating defeat and frankly the US armed forces were a complete shambles for 10 years after that. And yet, within five years, it was all forgiven and forgotten. And in the world at large by the end of the 1970's, the United States was back as the leader of the free world – trusted, beloved by all, well, by most. That could happen again, if the US pulls out of Iraq, as soon as Mr Bush leaves power.
Which is what I think will happen. About 10 minutes after the inauguration of the next President in January 2009, the evacuation starts. However, there is the possibility that the United States before Mr Bush leaves will attack Iran. And if that happens, I think we have a very different outcome. Former National Security Adviser in the United States, Zbigniew Brzezinski is on record as saying if the United States attacks Iran, it will lose its place in the world. And I think he's right.
ELEANOR HALL: What do you think the odds are though, of the United States attacking Iran?
GWYNNE DYER: I have no idea, I change in my view from week to week on this, which presumably means they're about 50/50. I mean, the forces are in place, the runways have been lengthened, you know, the extra carriers are in the Gulf.
ELEANOR HALL: And yet there are constant denials from the Bush administration…
GWYNNE DYER: Well of course there are, but that's what you'd have in this situation, so it means nothing. Could all be bluff, and I hope it is, but if it isn't, then it is imaginable that the Bush administration decides to roll the dice one last time. If they attacked Iran, they would lose, and of course, the Iranians would close the Gulf to the tanker traffic, and so suddenly there's a global economic crisis, and then in two or three months we get America off the hook, somehow and get the Gulf reopened. But by that time, frankly, I think NATO will have broken up, I think the Russians will have decided they'd better make a deal with the Chinese, it would change the look of the chessboard very dramatically.
ELEANOR HALL: Why would it change it so dramatically, when you're saying that the Iraq war, you're expecting that the world and the American people will forgive the Bush administration, why wouldn't they equally forgive it for a disastrous war in Iran, were that to happen?
GWYNNE DYER: It's the rogue state phenomenon. I mean, this could be another unprovoked, illegal American attack on a sovereign state. It would actually convince a great many people that the United States is congenitally a rogue state.
A senior Japanese diplomat said to me, last year, he said "You know the United States is a twelve year old with a shotgun".
And what he meant was that as the United States begins to suspect that it's past the apogee of its trajectory, its on the way down, as a great power no longer on the way up or at the top securely, that it is becoming extremely erratic, that is lashing out in all sorts of ways to try and slow or stop what it perceives as insipient decline.
So there is concern that we're getting into rather deep water here, that we may be going into an era where the Americans become highly unpredictable and quite dangerous.
ELEANOR HALL: Gwynne Dyer, thanks very much for speaking to us.
Dang! And I was just starting to like being a superpower.
This one is rich: A senior Japanese diplomat said to me, last year, he said "You know the United States is a twelve year old with a shotgun".
Speaking of a state passing its apogee.
China is an emerging superpower..if they manage to contain the internal pressures. It isn't because of some goof up by the US, it is simply the introduction of capitalism to a sheltered county of > 1 billion people.
Last edited by Cognescenti; 06-02-2007 at 03:48 PM.
Dang! And I was just starting to like being a superpower.
This one is rich: A senior Japanese diplomat said to me, last year, he said "You know the United States is a twelve year old with a shotgun".
Speaking of a state passing its apogee.
China is an emerging superpower..if they manage to contain the internal pressures. It isn't because of some goof up by the US, it is simply the introduction of capitalism to a sheltered county of > 1 billion people.
Well I’m glad you read it. I just don’t have the need to read his justification for hating his country.
I’m fully aware that my government is far from perfect and has many dishonorable things.
I don’t need his daily massive copy/paste posts to confirm that.
What interests me is what members think, not just random articles.
On the web, you can find material to support your conclusion regardless of what it is.
But if I hated any place as much as he does I would leave.
Maybe the best use of his talents (cough cough) would be to open up a hate site.
God forbid that an expert should sound the alarm bells about the state of his country, and God forbid that an American member should choose to post important information.
At least we aren't rubber stamping everything the government does, like certain people.
Stating one's views is now considered spreading hate.
I advise those members to either say something fruitful and constructive or remain silent. Your tactics are used in order to achieve intimidation through attacking the credibility of a person or a website, mockery and defamation, Just to silence an opposing view.
This Will Not Work!
I repeat, this Will Not Work!
Your actions are only further proving to us that what you stand for, what you are defending is wrong.
Your attacks prove that your arguments are completely, baseless, bankrupt and hollow.
You cannot counter with proof or a civilized rebuttal, therefore the only option left at your disposal is to insult the opposing side.
So, for your sake, cease your provocations because you will never deter us.
This is the last time that I will respond to a meaningless post...
God forbid that an expert should sound the alarm bells about the state of his country, and God forbid that an American member should choose to post important information.
At least we aren't rubber stamping everything the government does, like certain people.
Stating one's views is now considered spreading hate.
I advise those members to either say something fruitful and constructive or remain silent. Your tactics are used in order to achieve intimidation through attacking the credibility of a person or a website, mockery and defamation, Just to silence an opposing view.
This Will Not Work!
I repeat, this Will Not Work!
Your actions are only further proving to us that what you stand for, what you are defending is wrong.
Your attacks prove that your arguments are completely, baseless, bankrupt and hollow.
You cannot counter with proof or a civilized rebuttal, therefore the only option left at your disposal is to insult the opposing side.
So, for your sake, cease your provocations because you will never deter us.
This is the last time that I will respond to a meaningless post...
That's from Patrick Henry, right? I thought it sounded familiar. Well said, sir.
How exactly, would you suggest another forum member, though perhaps seriously deluded, rebut your argument that Bush, who despite his evident mental deficiencies, is somehow able to chanel Svengali, Rasputin and Machiavelli all at once and sponsor both sides in a turf battle in Tripoli? That would quite an accomplished for a cretin in charge of a declining superpower, wouldn't it?
BTW..you do realize Seymour Hersch is probably a ..........ah, never mind.
Insulting each other in a sarcastic manner is not legitimate debate. It is laziness and intellectual self-gratification and will be deleted. You all know this. So please stop it.
Thank you.
This is a general notice that is not aimed at any particular member
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