The Motives for a Flawed War - Israel's Proxy War?
by M. Shahid Alam, 21-2-2003
This may not be America's war at all, much less a war of the West against Islam or Islamists.
Instead, could this be Israel's war against the Arabs fought through a proxy, the only proxy that can take on the Arabs? This will most likely provoke derisive skepticism.
Could the world's only superpower be persuaded to fight Israel's war? Is it even possible? Could the tail wag this great dog?
Consider first Israel's motives. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Pakistan do not threaten the United States; but they are a threat to Israel's hegemonic ambitions over the region.
This conflict between Israel and her neighbors was written into the Zionist script. A Jewish state could only be inserted into Palestine by resort to a massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
After such inauspicious beginnings, Israel could only sustain itself by keeping its neighbors weak, divided, and disoriented. It has since waged wars against Egypt in 1956; against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967; against Iraq in 1981; against Lebanon, since 1982; and against Palestinians continuously since 1948.
Israel's contradictions have deepened since the mounting of the second Intifada.
When the Palestinians rejected the Bantustans offered at Oslo, Israel chose Ariel Sharon to ratchet its war against Palestinian civilians. Faced with Apaches, F-16s, tanks and artillery, in desperation, the Palestinians turned increasingly to suicide bombings. Sharon's brutal war was not working, and Israel's losses began to catch up with Palestinian casualties.
In April 2002, Israeli tanks reoccupied the Palestinian towns, destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure, increasingly placing Palestinians under curfews, sieges, destroying their workshops, stores, hospitals, orchards and farms. This was the new strategy of slow ethnic cleansing through starvation.
But Israel cannot do this alone. This ethnic cleansing can only be implemented in the shadow of a major war against the Arabs, a war to Balkanize the region, a war to bring about regime-change in Iraq, Syria and Iran, a war that only United States can wage.
Israel needs United States to wage a proxy war on behalf of Israel...
This is not to argue that the pro-Israeli lobby is the only reason for the projected US war against Iraq.
At present, there are several forces in United States that are pushing for this war.
Prominent among these indigenous forces are the oil corporations, the arms manufacturers, the aerospace industry, and the right-wing Christian evangelists
However, it is doubtful if these indigenous groups, on their own, could have pushed United States so decisively towards the present catastrophic confrontation with the Islamic world.
[Mohammed Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His last book, 'Poverty from the Wealth of Nations', was published by Palgrave in 2000. ]
Iraq could cost US its leadership
former security adviser
Jordan Times, 20-2-2003
To avoid risking its global leadership the United States should avoid "demeaning and destructive" polemics with its important allies," wrote former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served in the Carter administration in the 1970s.
Washington's definition of its war on terrorism, he added, is seen by many abroad as "excessively theological ('evildoers who hate freedom') and unrelated to any political context."
Brzezinski cited the Bush administration's "reluctance to see a connection between Middle Eastern terrorists and the political problems of the Middle East;" its "unsubstantiated efforts to connect Iraq with Al Qaeda;" and its "evident, if unstated, endorsement... of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's notions of how to deal with both the Palestinians and the region as a whole."
Russia condemns Washington
for piling pressure on inspectors
By David Usborne in New York, 21-2-2003
Tensions between veto-holding members of the UN Security Council grew yesterday after Russia said pressure was being exerted on weapons inspectors to give a negative assessment of Iraqi compliance or to accept they will have to leave the country soon.
Russia's outburst, which appeared to be directed at the United States, came as Washington and London continued to agonise over the timing and content of a new resolution to authorise disarming Iraq by military means. It is expected to surface early next week.
"Inspectors are being subjected to very strong pressure in order to provoke their departure from Iraq, or to present to the Security Council assessments which could be used as a pretext for the use of force against Iraq," said Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister.