Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he “pays” for his “heinous crime”: the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose “compassion” allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to “face justice from a higher power.” Amen.

The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as “a babbling brook of bullshit.” Such eloquence summarizes the circus of Megrahi’s release.

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of “strategic interests.”

“The endgame came down to damage limitation,” said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, “because the evidence amassed by [Megrahi’s] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice.” New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft — he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shop owner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognize him in the courtroom.

The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, “discovered” in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi’s suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was “transferred” through two airports undetected to Flight 103.

A “key secret witness” at the original trial, who claimed to have seen Megrahi and his co-accused al-Alim Khalifa Fahimah (who was acquitted) loading the bomb on to the plane at Frankfurt, was bribed by the US authorities holding him as a “protected witness.” The defense exposed him as a CIA informer who stood to collect, on the Libyans’ conviction, up to $4m as a reward.

Megrahi was convicted by three Scottish judges sitting in a courtroom in “neutral” Holland. There was no jury. One of the few reporters to sit through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot, whose landmark investigation in Private Eye exposed it as a cacophony of blunders, deceptions and lies: a whitewash. The Scottish judges, while admitting a “mass of conflicting evidence” and rejecting the fantasies of the CIA informer, found Megrahi guilty on hearsay and unproven circumstance.. Their 90-page “opinion”, wrote Foot, “is a remarkable document that claims an honored place in the history of British miscarriages of justice”. (Lockerbie — the Flight from Justice by Paul Foot can be downloaded from www.private-eye.co.uk for £5).

Foot reported that most of the staff of the US embassy in Moscow who had reserved seats on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt canceled their bookings when they were alerted by US intelligence that a terrorist attack was planned. He named Margaret Thatcher the “architect” of the cover-up after revealing that she killed the independent inquiry her transport secretary Cecil Parkinson had promised the Lockerbie families; and in a phone call to President George Bush Sr. on 11 January 1990, she agreed to “low-key” the disaster after their intelligence services had reported “beyond doubt” that the Lockerbie bomb had been placed by a Palestinian group contracted by Tehran as a reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US warship in Iranian territorial waters. Among the 290 dead were 66 children. In 1990, the ship’s captain was awarded the Legion of Merit by Bush Sr “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer.”

Perversely, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, Bush needed Iran’s support as he built a “coalition” to expel his wayward client from an American oil colony. The only country that defied Bush and backed Iraq was Libya. “Like lazy and overfed fish,” wrote Foot, “the British media jumped to the bait. In almost unanimous chorus, they engaged in furious vilification and op en warmongering against Libya.” The framing of Libya for the Lockerbie crime was inevitable. Since then, a US Defense Intelligence Agency report, obtained under Freedom of Information, has confirmed these truths and identified the likely bomber; it was to be centerpiece of Megrahi’s defense.

In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi’s case for appeal. “The commission is of the view,” said its chairman, Dr Graham Forbes, “that based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”

The words “miscarriage of justice” are missing entirely from the current furor, with Kenny MacAskill reassuring the baying mob that the scapegoat will soon face justice from that “higher power.” What a disgrace.

Mr. Sharif introduces the reader to Arafat in 1967. While Fateh battled over who should be their leader, Arafat slipped into the Occupied Territories to consolidate his status. Impressed by his daring and commitment, he was elected to the position. This is followed by an description of the early interactions between the author and Arafat–a period that included the events leading up to and including Black September. For those unaware of this time in Palestinian history, it was when Jordan attacked the Palestinian camps located inside their territory, unleashing a war that spread to Amman and set back the movement for years. Intertwined with this narrative is a history of the Palestinian people from 1948 on with the emphasis being the story of that history after the formation of the PLO.

This story is worth repeating. Attacks, diplomacy and all. Bassam Abu Sharif provides details known only to someone in his position about PLO hijackings, operations against the IDF, the Iranian revolution, the machinations leading up to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the eventual departure of the PLO fighters, the Oslo negotiations and the siege of Arafat’s house in the months before his eventual exile and death. It is a story of frustration, anger, patience, and unremitting recalcitrance of the PLO’s foe. It is a tale not unlike the stories of other nations and their struggle for independence yet unique to the unusual situation of the Palestinians. There is tragedy just as there is heroism. Fighting united against the common enemy and quarreling inside the organization, not to mention with the established Arab nations. Through the entire text, the reader sees Bassam Abu Sharif’s respect for Arafat grow along with an allegiance and friendship that placed him in the perfect position to write this history of Arafat and the movement he came to signify.

When Sharif expresses his opinion on an event or strategy he is describing, that opinion is in the context of his support for what he believed to be the best way forward for the Palestinian people. He writes about his opposition to suicide bombing and his belief that Saddam Hussein was tricked by Washington into attacking Kuwait in 1990. While discussing the Oslo negotiations, he makes clear his distrust of the Israeli government and suspicions about Washington. His description of the Israeli siege of Arafat’s home is laced with anger and concludes by voicing the suspicion that Arafat was poisoned.

Despite its largely uncritical nature, Arafat and the Dream of Palestine is an interesting and useful work, especially in the West where Tel Aviv’s version of events tends to have a greater grip on the popular imagination. A true journalist, Bassam Abu Sharif rarely embellishes the facts of his story, telling it in a straightforward yet compelling manner. Then again, it is a story that needs no embellishment. It is not only the story of Yasser Arafat. It is also the story of the last forty years of the Palestinian struggle. After reading Sharif’s account, it becomes even clearer why the Israelis and their US backers wanted him removed. His relationship to the Palestinian struggle is comparable to that of Ho Chi Minh’s to the Vietnamese people’s long war against occupation or Nelson Mandela’s to that of South Africa’s black population.

US tactics and strategy toward the region becomes relevant, only if we take account of the recent historical, economic and political changes in Latin America and the evolving political alignments.

A realistic assessment of US policy by necessity must go beyond policy pronouncements and Washington’s ‘projection of power’ to an analysis of its existing capabilities and the resources available to implement Obama’s agenda for Latin America. In evaluating Washington’s policy, the key is to analyze its coherence and feasibility in light of its political diagnosis of Latin America. This provides a basis for determining the compatibility or conflict of interests between the two regions. A basic question arises: How do the Obama regime’s policies, objectives, and available resources square with the development needs of different Latin American countries in a time of deepening world depression?

To answer that question, requires we examine the recent policies and political alignments in Latin America. It would be utterly foolish to over or underestimate the degree of US “hegemony” or Latin American “autonomy,” especially in light of major shifts in power relations over the past two decades, and continuing today.

Latin America’s relations with the US are decisively influenced by internal events, including class conflicts, which determine the correlation of political forces, as well as external events such as US intervention and outward expansion, and world market conditions. The shifts in Latin America’s political-economic relations can be divided into distinct periods, which provide an overview of the relative degree of hegemony and autonomy with regard to the US empire.

The Changing Contours of US-Latin American Relations: 1990-2009

Any “general overview” of US-Latin American relations is subject to exceptions and variations in particular country experiences, even as it highlight ‘dominant trends’ in the region.

The first two decades from 1980-2000 establish certain parameters for recent policies particularly the conflicts and divergences of interests.

The period from 1980-1999 was defined for Washington and Wall Street as the ‘Golden Age’ in US-Latin American relations. The regimes accepted and promoted US hegemony, following the precise terms of the IMF, the Washington Consensus and a US centered model of capital accumulation.

This included the lifting of trade barriers, the privatization of public enterprises (including banks, oil wells, mines, factories and telecoms) and their subsequent denationalization or transfer to US and European multinational corporations (MNCs).

The US and EU took over these public enterprises at exceptionally favorable prices and terms, which led to the massive transfer of profits, interest and ‘rent’ payments to the MNCs and provided them with extensive leverage over the entire financial/credit-system and access to local savings in the Latin American countries.

On the political level, the incumbent regimes embraced and promoted the US sponsored free market ideology known as “neo-liberalism” and backed US diplomatic and political intervention in the region as well as overseas.

The plunder of public treasuries and private savings by the MNCs and the resulting concentration of wealth and political power polarized society and precipitated major political economic crises. This led to popular upheavals throughout most of the region during the period from 2000-2004. Latin America witnessed the ousting of several US client regimes, serious widespread questioning of the free market ideology and a growing potential for radical structural changes.

As a consequence of the new correlation of forces, US political power declined and its influence was largely confined to political and economic elites at the margins of governance and under political siege from mobilized movements and disaffected electorates.

The ‘third period’ reflected ‘hybrid regimes’, which spoke to the populist demands and critiques of ‘neo-liberalism’ (empire-centered economic structures and policies) without actually reversing any of the unpopular structural/property legacies imposed by the earlier client regimes. The rise and consolidation of a wide range of highly differentiated ‘center-left regimes’ benefited from world economic conditions, especially high commodity prices, which facilitated social welfare programs and economic recovery as well as the relative ‘decline’ of US political power. This decline was intensified by the US involvement in a series of prolonged wars in the Middle East and South Asia and its ‘global war on terror’.

The ‘third period’ featured an increase in the relative autonomy of Latin America aided by huge windfall profits from exceptional prices and expanding markets in Asia, and from the regional political-economic initiatives of Venezuela’s Chavez government.

The end of the primary commodity boom and the emergence of a world-wide depression mark the beginning of the fourth period. Two contradictory phenomena impacted on US-Latin American relations. Because the US was the epicenter of the world economic crisis and its financial and investment institutions turned insolvent, finance and investment fled or were repatriated, weakening the US presence in Latin America and its economic leverage in a region with huge foreign reserves. Secondly, the over-extension of US military forces in other regions (Middle East/Asia/Eastern Europe) lessened its capacity for military intervention in Latin America. While developments in the world-economic and military situation opened opportunities to exercise greater Latin American autonomy, the decline of export markets, the drying up of credit markets and foreign capital inflows exposed the vulnerability of the ‘center-left’ regimes with their dependency on ‘export strategies’. The contradictory features of the ‘fourth period’ shaped the framework for contemporary US-Latin American relations and define some of the key issues facing Latin American rulers and the Obama regime.

Rising Militarism, Financial Protectionism and Declining Trade

The policies of the Obama regime toward Latin America are negatively framed by its three top policy priorities. The Obama regime’s foreign policy builds and expands the military-driven empire building of his predecessors. Contrary to the hopes and expectations of many of his progressive and leftist advocates of peace, Obama has staffed his regime with committed militarists, Zionists and Cold Warriors.

The major difference between Obama and Bush’s policy is the diplomatic language, which accompanies empire building and the scope and depth of military activity. Obama has adopted a rhetoric of ‘reconciliation,’ ‘negotiation’ and ‘change’ as opposed to Bush’s overtly bellicose rhetoric of confrontation, even as Obama has accelerated and extended military activities beyond the Bush regime.

A systematic analysis of the Obama regime’s policies reveals the overriding emphasis on projecting military power as the main instrument for sustaining the empire throughout the world.

South Asia

The Obama regime has increased US military forces in Afghanistan by over 40% — by 21,000 troops added to the current 38,000 — and increased financing for doubling the size of the Afghan mercenary army and police to over 200,000. Washington has extended the field of warfare in Pakistan, escalated its bombing attacks in the Swat Valley on a daily basis and increased cross-border commando operations. The Obama regime has formally extended the US war-zone deeper into Pakistan territory and extended its reach into Pakistan intelligence institutions.

Despite Obama’s intense pressure on the European Union and its allies and clients around the world, few countries have pledged combat forces in support of Obama’s military strategy. Just as during the Bush era, Obama unilaterally pronounces a major military escalation and then expects his allies to follow. The Obama military and intelligence apparatus has moved even more intrusively into Pakistani institutions with the clear intent to purge nationalist officers and select officials who will more aggressively repress the communities, organizations and leaders opposed to US intervention in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Iraq

The contrast between Obama’s diplomatic rhetoric of military withdrawal and military escalation is most blatant in the case of Iraq. The Obama regime has extended the time frame of US military occupation and increased funding for permanent military bases and related infrastructure. His military strategy envisions a massive mercenary Iraqi army and police force to control the population and repress any nationalist resistance. Obama will double the number of Iraqi mercenaries spread throughout the country under the Pentagon’s command.

Iran

The most striking policy adopted by the Obama regime toward Iran is his adding new and even harsher sanctions to the existing economic embargo. Obama continues to threaten Iran with a pre-emptive military assault in line with the contingency war plans developed by top Pentagon officials held over from the Bush regime. In pursuit of this saber-rattling posture, Obama appointed two of the most bellicose Israeli-American ideologues, includng Dennis Ross, as chief emissary to Iran and Stuart Levey to the Treasury in charge of imposing economic sanctions. Washington is making a major diplomatic effort to isolate Iran, through negotiations with Syria, Russia and China. In the face of these ‘facts on the ground’ Obama’s public rhetoric about offering Iran a ‘new policy,’ is blatant propaganda stunt. The massive US air and naval armada off the coast of Iran continues to threaten Teheran with a blockade or even massive air and naval strikes. The Obama regime continues to fund and train terrorist groups to infiltrate Iran from their bases in Iraq and Pakistan and to attack Iranian government facilities and officials. Israeli military threats to strike Iran are made more probable with the Obama regime’s transfer of new military technology, including the most advanced anti-missile system and ‘bunker-buster’ bombs designed to destroy underground Iranian government facilities.

Palestine/South Lebanon/Syria

The Obama regime’s military policy is clearly evidenced in its unconditional backing of Israel’s murderous military assault on Gaza, its selective assassination of Palestinian activists in the West Bank and its threats against Hezbollah.

The Obama regime, together with both houses of Congress, has backed every Israeli act of war– including its brutal economic blockade of Gaza and the systematic eviction of Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Obama administration is deeply infested with prominent pro-Israel Zionists at all levels precluding any change in Washington’s robust military ties even with the far right militarist Netanyahu-Lieberman regime.

East Africa

Obama’s regime continues to pursue a confrontational policy toward Muslim Sudan by funding the armed separatists in South Darfur and by a recently reported air attack on a Sudanese military convoy. In the face of its failed military intervention in Somalia by its Ethiopian proxy, Washington has opted for a new Somali client coalition backed by African mercenaries from Uganda.

Russia/Eastern Europe

Under Obama, the provocative military encirclement of Russia continues via the recruitment of new client NATO ‘members’ among the former Soviet Republics and the building of bases on the very frontiers of Russia. Obama combines a double discourse of diplomatic conciliation while building new military bases, missile sites and advanced radar stations from Poland southward toward Ukraine and Georgia. Washington’s ‘diplomatic overtures’ to Russia are driven by its logistical needs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and especially its war preparations toward Iran. The Obama regime is demanding that Russia provide logistical support for the US/NATO Afghan-Pakistan war and occupation while demanding Russia cancel its sale of advanced missiles as well as its nuclear power plant contract agreement with Iran in exchange for US ‘good will’…

China

Although the Obama regime is acutely aware of its dependence on China’s continued financing of the US economic deficits, it has nevertheless engaged in a high risk naval confrontation in China’s off shore economic zones. Recent Pentagon reports on Chinese military preparedness are laced with lurid Cold War rhetoric designed to inflate China’s ‘threat’ to US dominance in Asia and its ‘lack of transparency’. Once again, the Obama regime presents the double discourse of friendly diplomacy and aggressive militarist policies.

China faces a US military encirclement along an arc of US bases from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, to South Korea, as well as a new military doctrine labeling China a ‘threat’ to be ‘contained’ in Asia.

Obama’s Latin American Policy

To decipher the real content of the Obama regime’s policy to Latin America one needs to look at the foreign policy priorities, the allocations of financial resources and public policy commitments and ignore its inconsequential diplomatic rhetoric. The first major pronouncement, in line with its global military policies, was to militarize the US-Mexican frontier, allocating nearly one-half billion dollars in military and related aid to the right wing Calderon regime. The entire focus of White House policy toward the Mexican and Colombian regimes over the problem of narcotics and narco-violence is the military ignoring its socio-economic structural roots:

Millions of young Mexican peasant and small farmers driven into bankruptcy, unemployment and poverty by the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA), created a large pool of recruits for the narco traffickers.

The expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrant workers from the US and the new militarized borders has closed off a major escape for Mexican peasants fleeing destitution and crime. In contrast to the formation of the European Union, which provided tens or billions to the less competitive countries, like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Poland, entering the European Union, the US has provided Mexico with no compensatory funds to upgrade its productive competitiveness and provide needed employment for its people.

The highly militarized Colombian regime, notorious for its violation of human rights, is currently the biggest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. Under Plan Colombia, the US financed counter-insurgency program, Bogota has received over 5 billion dollars, the most advanced military technology and thousands of American military advisers and sub-contracted mercenaries. The Obama’s support for the right-wing Colombian regime is his response to the emergence of democratically elected populist and radical governments in Ecuador and Venezuela.

Obama’s policies toward Latin America are driven by his extension of the military defense/priorities of the Bush Administration, including the economic embargo of Cuba and its virulent hostility toward Venezuelan nationalism. There are no new economic initiatives. Beyond the rhetorical support for free trade, Obama upholds past quotas and tariffs on more competitive imports from Brazil, even adding new protectionist measures against Mexican trucks and truck drivers.

Obama’s relentless pursuit of military-driven empire building while in the midst of an ongoing and deepening domestic economic depression forms the basis for understanding Washington’s contemporary relation with Latin America today. His regime’s military approach to Latin America is reflected in his inability or unwillingness to allocate economic resources and underscores his concern to sustain two major US clients, Colombia and Mexico through military aid programs. Obama’s limited interest and sparse commitment of economic resources to Latin America reflects the very low foreign policy priority it has in the current White House. Latin America is a fifth level priority after the US domestic economic depression, the Middle East and South Asian wars, coordinating economic policies with the European Union and formulating economic strategies and military relations with Russia and China. With these priorities, the Obama regime has little time, interest, or programmatic offerings to help Latin America cope with the onset of the economic recession.

At the most basic level the Obama regime is following a three-fold strategy of (1) retaining support from rightist regimes (Colombia, Mexico and Peru); (2) increasing influence on ‘centrist regimes’ (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay); and (3) isolating and weakening leftists and populist governments (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua).

What is most striking about the supposedly “progressive” Obama regime’s policy for Latin America are the continuities with the previous reactionary Bush administration in almost all strategic areas. These include:

   1. Latin America’s very low priority in US global policy;
   2. The US emphasis on military (“security”) drug enforcement collaboration over any long term socio-economic poverty alleviation and drug addiction treatment programs;
   3. Its close collaboration with the most rightwing regimes in the region (Mexico and Colombia);
   4. The continuation of the US economic embargo of Cuba, despite the loss of its last two Latin American backers;
   5. Obama’s double discourse of talking free markets while practicing protectionism;
   6. The US financing and strengthening the role of the IMF as an instrument of imperial expansion;
   7. The US policy of driving a wedge between ‘centrist regimes’ (Lula in Brazil, Fernandez in Argentina, Vasquez in Uruguay and Bachelet in Chile) and ‘left and center-left nationalist regimes’, (Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador and Ortega in Nicaragua) and
   8. Its support for separatist regional elites’ actions to destabilize center-left governments operating from their traditional far right-wing bases in Sta Cruz (Bolivia), Guayaqul (Ecuador) and Maracaibo (Venezuela).

In other words the Obama regime has embraced overall the strategic agenda of the Bush Administration essentially intact, while making several secondary changes having to do with adaptations based on the decline of US power. In addition, Obama has facilitated a few major negative changes, which go further than the Bush administration in harming Latin America’s financial and trading position. While reiterating the anachronistic demands for Cuba to convert to capitalism (dubbed a “democratic transition”) as a condition for ending the US embargo, Obama has slightly eased travel restrictions for US-based Cuban families to visit relatives in Cuba and send them money. The State Department relies less on confrontational diplomatic language and has made overt gestures to centrist regimes, including White House meetings with Lula Da Silva (March 2009) and Vice President Biden’s attendance at a meeting with centrist Presidents (March 27-28, 2009) in Chile. Obama’s resort to “soft power”, which is not backed by any new economic initiatives and which continues the basic policies of his predecessor has not gained him new allies.

However, there is one set of ‘changes’ resulting directly and indirectly from the US depression and Obama’s gigantic deficit financing, which has a very negative impact on Latin America’s economic recovery. The Obama regime is absorbing most of the Hemisphere’s credit to aid the financial bailout. This policy makes it difficult for Latin American exporters to finance their sales. Moreover, the Obama regime’s demands on the financial sector to expand their capital reserves and to direct their lending to the American domestic market has led banks to repatriate capital from their Latin American subsidiaries at the expense of Latin American borrowers — extending and deepening the recession in Latin America.

The Obama regime’s diplomatic and linguistic changes and affirmation of free trade have little substance: the White House continues the double discourse of talking up “free trade” while introducing a new and more virulent financial protectionism. In addition to the twenty billion dollar subsidies to agricultural exporters, the Democrats have pushed the “Buy American” provisions in Federal procurement policy and multi billion dollar subsidies to the auto industry.

Latin America faces a rising tide of US protectionism as the Obama regime reacts to the domestic economic depression by forcing Latin America to seek new trading partners, to protect their internal markets and to seek new sources for trade and credit.

Latin America Faces the World Crisis

Throughout Latin America, the economic depression is wrecking havoc on the economy, the labor market, trade, credit and investment. All the major countries in the region are headed toward negative growth, and experiencing double digit unemployment, rising levels of poverty and mass protests. In Brazil in late March and early April, a coalition of trade unions, urban social movements and the rural landless workers movement convoked large scale demonstrations — including participation from the union confederation, CUT, which is usually allied with Lula’s Workers Party.

Unemployment rates in Brazil have risen sharply, exceeding 10%, as massive lay-offs hit the auto and other metallurgical industries. In Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, strikes and protests have begun to spread in protest over rising unemployment, the increase of bankruptcies among exporters facing world-wide decline in demand and unable to secure financing.

The more industrialized Latin American countries, whose economies are more integrated into world markets and have followed an export growth strategy, are the ones most adversely affected by the world depression. This includes Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. In addition, countries dependent on overseas remittances and tourism, like Ecuador, the Central American and Caribbean countries and even Mexico, with their ‘open’ economies, are badly hit by world recession.

While the US financial collapse did not have a major and immediate impact on Latin America- largely because the earlier financial crashes in Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and Chile led their governments to impose limits on speculation — the indirect results of the US crash, especially with regard to the credit freeze and the decline of world trade, has brought down productive sectors across the board. By mid-2009, manufacturing, mining, services and agriculture, in the private and public sector were firmly in the grip of a recession.

The vulnerability of Latin America to the world crises is a direct result of the structure of production and the development strategies adopted the region. Following the ‘neo-liberal’ or empire-centered ‘restructuring’ of the economies which took place between the mid-1970s through the 1990s, the economic profile of Latin America was characterized by a weak state sector due to privatization of all key productive sectors. The de-nationalization of strategic financial, credit, trading and mining sectors increased vulnerability as did the highly concentrated income and property ownership held mainly by small foreign and domestic elite. These characteristics were further exacerbated by the primary commodity boom between early 2003 until the middle of 2008. The regimes’ further shift toward an export strategy relying on primary products set the stage for a crash. As a result of its economic structure Latin America was extremely vulnerable to the decision taken by US and EU policy makers in charge of key economic sectors. De-nationalization denied the state the necessary levers to meet the crisis by reversing the direction of the economy.

Structural changes imposed by the IMF/World Bank and its domestic ‘neo-liberal’ ruling class partners ‘opened’ the countries to the full blast of the world depression while dismantling the very state institutions which could have protected the economy or at least avoided the worst effects of the crisis.

Privatization led to the concentration of income, lessened local demand and heightened dependence on export markets while depriving the state of levers to control investment and savings, which could counteract the decline of overseas inflows of capital and the collapse of its overseas markets.

Denationalization facilitated the outflow of capital especially in the financial sector, deepened the credit crises and adversely affected the balance of payments. Foreign ownership made Latin American countries subject to strategic economic decisions made by overseas economic elites looking at the costs and benefits to their economic empires. For example, in Brazil the closing of US-owned auto factories and the mass firings of workers are based on ‘global market’ cost calculations, totally divorced from the needs of the Brazilian labor market.

The ‘export strategy’ was dependent on the state subsidizing the expansion of agro-business plantations producing staples for export markets. This came at the expense of small farmers, landless peasants and rural workers, weakening the domestic market as an alternative to a collapsing overseas markets, increasing dependence on food imports and undermining food security.

Export strategies depend on holding down labor costs, wages and salaries, thus weakening domestic demand and making employment dependent on the fluctuations of overseas demand. Specialized production in a vast complex international division of labor is central to the multinational corporation. This has dramatically reduced the national diversification of industry and integral manufacturing where all components of a product are produced within a single geographic region. Under the current division of labor, a Brazilian manufacturer of car brakes is totally dependent on external demand determined by the MNC. The strategic disadvantages of this ‘specialization’ in a global capitalist chain of production have become strikingly evident in this depression.

Despite these deep structural weaknesses, inherited from previous regimes, the current center-left regimes in Latin American have not moved toward any structural changes to decrease their economic vulnerabilities, with the partial exception of Chavez’s Venezuela.

The March 2009 summit of self-styled ‘third way’ regimes (plus the Obama-Biden and British Labor governments) met in Santiago, Chile where they studiously avoided even mentioning the flawed internal structures which have brought on the economic crises and promise to deepen it.

The consensus proposals of the “third way” regimes repeated anachronistic appeals for greater capital flows divorced from reality of the current crises. They called on the US, EU and Japan to resurrect collapsing markets and to promote trade. Specifically the Santiago meeting called for increased funding for the Inter American Development Bank (IDB, BID in Spanish), and encouraged the G20 leaders to promote stimulus packages and to pledge against protectionism. They called on Latin American regimes to increase spending and liquidity, to lower interest rates and to prop up, financial institutions and promote exporters.

The center-left regimes meeting in Santiago made no mention of plans to increase domestic demand through intervention in the labor market by preventing industrialists from firing workers. They did not mention increasing the minimum wage. They avoided any discussion on increasing demand in the rural areas through income generating agrarian reforms. They did not consider establishing publicly funded import substitution industrialization, which could generate employment for workers dismissed from export sectors.

In the face of rising food prices, no provisions were proposed to subsidize low income families, the unemployed, children and pensioners on fixed income. The center-left regimes’ proposals demonstrated high structural rigidity and their incapacity to break with failed strategies tied to the powerful agro-mineral export ruling class. Instead their proposals reaffirm their dependence on the ‘expansionary’ stimulus programs of the ruling classes in the US and Europe. Their repeated calls for ‘free trade’ and appeals to avoid ‘protectionism’ fell on deaf ears as all the imperial countries follow a dual policy of promoting free trade for their dynamic overseas multinationals and protectionism for their financial and troubled manufacturing sectors at home.

While eschewing any structural domestic changes that would favor unemployed workers, peasants, public employees and small businesses, they persist in following policies favoring the bankers, export elites and multi-national corporations. The main economic focus of Latin America’s center-left regimes is not internal reform; it is the pursuit of new overseas markets and investors.

In early April, Latin American leaders and their business elite met with their Arab counterparts in Qatar to expand investments and trade through joint ventures. Similar missions to China, Russia and Japan have led to investments almost exclusively in capital intensive extractive industries (petroleum and minerals) and mechanized export agriculture. Inter-regional trade via MERCOSUR has been highly asymmetrical as evidenced by Argentina’s $4 billion dollar trade deficit with Brazil. The center-left is structurally incapable of recognizing that the world depression has in large part undermined the ‘export strategy’; that the elites cannot overcome their internal contradictions and class constraints by ‘exporting’ their way to economic recovery. The search for new markets and investors in Asia and Middle East may provide a limited boost to the export enclaves but they will have little or no impact on the industry, service and related sectors, which employ the mass of workers and employees. Moreover, the Middle East and Asian countries are in serious crises as trade (both imports and exports), manufacturing and employment decline. Moreover, China has opted for a vast economic stimulus plan based on increasing domestic demand. Asia can provide Latin American regimes with little relief from the crises.

The one country absent from the Santiago meeting of the center-left regimes was Venezuela, in part because President Chavez has pursued an alternative economic strategy to the world depression.

Chavez strategy includes the nationalization of key economic sectors like and oil and gas, which increases state revenue; protection of strategic social sectors/food processing and distribution sectors; and the expansion of agrarian reform to increase local production of food. The government has a program of subsidized food prices, a 20% increase in the minimum wage to cushion the effects of inflation and public spending on labor intensive infrastructure projects which has resulted in a drop in unemployment with the creation of 280,000 new jobs in Jan-Feb 2009.

Chavez is pursuing a radical Keynesian program, which depends on large scale public investments to expand the domestic market and social subsidies targeting a large swath of the lower classes. His state investment policy relies on the ‘cooperation’ of the still-dominant private sector, especially finance, construction, agro-mining and manufacturing, either via financial incentives and state contracts or through threats of intervention or nationalization.

Chavez’ domestic structural reforms are complemented by his promotion of regional political-economic pacts, like PETROCARIBE and ALBA, with Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and several Caribbean and Central American states. He is counting on the growing financial and investment agreements with China, Middle East, especially Iran, and Russia, particularly in joint ventures in the petroleum and mining sectors.

While Chavez’ strategy represents a clear break with and alternative to the center-left ‘export-elite’ centered approach, it still confronts a series of serious contradictions. Venezuela is over-dependent on a single export (petroleum) for 75% of its foreign exchange earnings and a single market (the US). Secondly it is rapidly depleting its foreign reserves. Thirdly, its efforts to promote regional integration have not prospered as the principle countries in Latin America look toward the G20 for salvation. State intervention and nationalization have increased national leverage over the economy but has not confronted the mal-distribution of income, property and power. As a result, a wave of worker/employee strikes in education, mining, smelting and manufacturing have hit the economy.

Equally serious a 30% rate of inflation has eroded buying power for those with fixed incomes and salaries undermining recent increases in the minimum wage. Increases in the price of foodstuffs, over 90% of which are imported, adversely affects the balance of payments. The immediate future could pose a threat to the social stability of the Venezuela.

Latin America and the Deepening Depression

The participation of several major Latin American countries in the G20 meeting in London, April 2, 2009, and the subsequent agreements reveal the political bankruptcy of the current political leadership. The declaration of a major new “stimulus” package was belied by the fact that most of the funds cited ($1.1 trillion dollars) were already allocated before the meeting and would have no effect. The actual amount of ‘new money’ was only a “fraction” ($250 billion dollars) and mostly geared to rescuing the financial sector.

The G20 solemn agreement to oppose protectionist legislation was belied by an OECD report that 17 of the 20 countries have recently adopted measures protecting local industries and restricting overseas financing. The biggest winner at the G20 was the IMF, which was promised an additional $500 billion dollars to provide credit lines and financing. Given the US-EU dominance of the IMF and given its past history of imposing restrictive conditions favoring the imperial countries, the strengthening of the IMF poses a major obstacle to any progressive Latin American recovery. The high expectations of Latin America’s center/left and rightist regimes that G20 would provide a meaningful stimulus were dashed.

On the left, Fidel Castro and like-minded allies in Latin America cite China as an alternative market and investment partner. Yet China’s overseas investments are almost always directed to the extractive export sectors (minerals, petrol) and, to a lesser degree, agriculture. As a result, Chinese investment in Latin America has created few jobs while favoring sectors that pollute the environment. Latin America’s export profile with China is reduced to a primary goods monoculture, highly vulnerable to the fluctuations of world prices. Moreover, China’s trade agreements with Latin America include the import of Chinese manufactured good produced by non-union, super-exploited workers which undermines any recovery of Latin America’s manufacturing sector.

Latin American leaders, who look to China to pull them out of the depression, are committed to a neo-colonial style recovery based on a raw material export model. Likewise, the turn to Russia as a new market and stimulus is a highly dubious proposition, given Russia’s petrol-gas dependent economy, its lack of competitive industries and above all its deepening depression with an economic decline of over 7% for 2009.

The Latin American leaders’ search for a new stimulus package from the US and EU or new trade alternatives with China and Russia are desperate efforts to save the failing elite export model. The idea promoted by Brazil that since the imperial countries caused the world depression, they should provide the solution, is a non-sequitor, especially in light of their incapacity to stimulate their own economies. The US promotion of the IMF is directed toward undermining any progressive Latin American policies and independent regimes, and not helping them recover from the crisis.

Conclusion

Because of the Obama regime’s profound and costly commitment to military-driven empire building and the multi- trillion dollar refinancing of its banking sector (while backing credit-financing protectionism), Latin America’s ruling classes cannot expect any “stimulus package” from US.

The deep political divisions between the US and Latin America (and between the classes within Latin America), divergent national and class strategies preclude any ‘regional strategy’. Even among the left nationalist regimes, apart from some limited complementary initiatives among the ALBA countries, no regional plan exists. In this regard it is a serious mistake to write or speak about a “Latin American” problem, or initiative. What we can observe today is a generalized breakdown of the export-driven model and divergent social responses, between income protecting policies of Venezuela and export subsidy policies of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, Peru and Colombia. Throughout the recession, these center-left regimes have demonstrated a high degree of structural rigidity, making no effort to deepen and expand the domestic market and public investment, let alone nationalize bankrupt enterprises. The crisis highlights the process of de-globalization and the increasing importance of the nation state.

The deepening economic crisis adversely affects incumbent regimes, whether they are center-left or right, and strengthens their opposition. In Argentina the right and far-right have dominated the streets, with a growing power base in the ‘interior’ among the Argentine agrarian elite and the middle class in Buenos Aires. The progressive trade union, CTA, which has organized strikes and protests, is not connected with any new left alternative political organization.

Brazil has witnessed similar protests by social movements and trade unions against rising unemployment of over 10% and the decline in export-oriented industries. But the principle political beneficiary of the declining popularity of Lula’s self-styled “Worker’s Party” is the Right.

In contrast, the center-left will benefit where rightist regimes are currently in power — namely Mexico, Colombia and Peru. But as is the case elsewhere, the mass movements lack an organized political response to a collapsing capitalism.

Moreover neither Cuba nor Venezuela offers a ‘model’ for the rest of Latin America. The former is highly dependent on a vulnerable tourist economy while the latter is a petrol economy. Given the systemic collapse of capitalism, these countries will need to move beyond ‘piecemeal reforms’ (such as Chavez food subsidies) and piecemeal nationalizations and toward the socialization of the financial, trade and manufacturing sectors.

Mass protests, general strikes, and other forms of social unrest are beginning to manifest themselves throughout the continent. No doubt the US will intensify its support for rightist movements in opposition and its existing rightist clients in power. US ‘hegemony’ over the Latin American elite is still strong even as it is virtually non-existent among the mass organizations in civil society. Given the overall militarist-protectionist posture of the Obama regime, we can expect intervention in the form of covert operations as class struggle escalates and moves toward a socialist transformation.

Although the text is occasionally uneven, with most of the testimony coming out of Iraq, Israel and Palestine, there is a consistency to the stories here. Some mothers express an inconsolable anger while others seem to have opted for an almost zen-like acceptance of their children’s deaths in the world’s battles. The consistency referred to is not in how they deal with their children’s deaths, but in their common desire that no other mothers suffer like they have. The most evocative stories come from Iraq and Palestine, in part because Galleymore spent the most time in those two broken nations, but perhaps also because the perpetrators of the death in those places are so close to Galleymore’s own life story. Indeed, her son served in Iraq and Afghanistan. This fact was not only the motivation for Galleymore’s visit to Iraq and other nations in the Middle East, but was also a motivation to write this book. It is part of her attempt to understand not only what her nation and its ally Israel have done to their chosen enemies that spurred this project but also to understand what compelled her son to join the US military.

Galleymore addresses this very issue in the book’s section on the United States. To be honest, this part of the text drew the least sympathy from this reader. Much of what is written here is difficult to sympathize with. We read the letters of a soldier describing his unit’s interactions with the Iraqi people–indiscriminate killing and fear accompanied by a growing hatred of the mission and the people he was told he was sent to liberate. More stories of poorly equipped US troops going into battles they should never have fought because they should never have been in Iraq. Underlying it all is a failure to understand that there is no lasting glory in their mission beyond the individual acts performed on that battlefield where they don’t belong. After these tales of the hardships of the occupiers, Galleymore asks the question she was asked by some of her interviewees in those nations under the US (or its ally Israel) military’s boot. How can American mothers allow their children to join in this endeavor of conquering and occupation? Why don’t the mothers of US children considering the military just tell them “no?”

In response, Galleymore considers the cultural assumptions that create the dynamic whereby young Americans join the military despite their mothers’ objections. In the United States, writes Galleymore, 18-year-olds can “make legally binding choices independent of parents and family, including the choice to enlist in the military.” Many parents go along with this choice, believing that the military will somehow teach their child discipline. It may very well do that, writes Galleymore, but it also teaches those children to kill. This is what most Americans refuse to openly acknowledge: that they have allowed their child to learn how to kill other humans. In more collectivist cultures like many of those in the Middle East and Central Asia, argues the author, where family, clan, and parental respect are paramount, it is extremely unlikely that a son would enlist without permission from the head of the family.

Then again, here in the United States, the military is everywhere–schools, television, video games. Our culture is permeated with the military’s presence. Boys and girls as young as eleven go to summer camps sponsored by the US Army. Recruiters roam the halls of many high schools and shopping malls looking for future soldiers and marines. Malls lend shop space to military recruiters for a weekend geared toward elementary and middle school age children that includes all the free video games kids want to play. All they need to provide the recruiters on site is their name and social security number. A few months later the phone calls, text messages and emails began coming, encouraging the youngster to consider joining the military. If these recruiters were working for a gang besides the military, they would be chased out of town and condemned for the predators they are.

The United States has the mother of two young girls living in the White House now. From all appearances Michelle Obama seems to be a wonderful mom. One wonders what she would tell a military recruiter if they called her home looking for Malia or sent her oldest daughter an email extolling the virtues of enlisting in the military. Hopefully, she would be appalled at the sheer audacity of a recruiter attempting to influence a child. Yet, this is what the military does. Without shame. Of course, if the United States was not so insistent on maintaining and expanding its reach via the sword, then perhaps the military wouldn’t feel compelled to kidnap the minds of middle-schoolers. One way to change (and perhaps the only way) the drive for empire Washington and Wall Street have locked this nation into is by resisting that drive. A good place to start is by making the mothers of those children who fight Washington’s wars aware of the consequences of their inaction is. A good place to start this awareness is at the top. So, let me suggest that when you finish reading Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak About War & Terror you mail your copy to Michelle Obama at the White House. Perhaps she’ll take the time to read it.

Back in 1997, while living in the United States, I came to know a couple from Majdal Shams, and today, they have become two of my closest friends. During our first encounter, I can vividly recall how unfathomable it was to listen to them explaining that, instead of a passport, they are only officially permitted to carry a travel document with the word “Undefined” printed as their nationality.

You see, Majdal Shams was captured by Israel in 1967 and has been under its military occupation ever since. It is one of the few villages still inhabited in the Golan Heights and whose people insisted on remaining in the midst of their apple and cherry orchards. Prior to the occupation, the Golan Heights consisted of 131 villages. Today only five of these villages remain inhabited, namely: Majdal Shams, Baq’atha, Ein Qenya, Mas’adeh, and Alghajar. Also prior to Israeli occupation, the Golan Heights had a population of over 153,000 people, but within 6 days after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the numbers shrunk to approximately 39,000, including about 19,000 Syrian Druze, 16,500 Jewish Settlers, and 2,100 Syrian Muslims. The Golan Heights is an area determined by the United Nations and the international community to be part of Syrian land, occupied by Israel.

Through story and example, I have come to learn of the silenced human suffering that takes place in this forgotten area of our world’s map, a land simply dispossessed of a nationality. And I am writing to deliver to my readers a glimpse of the daily agony lived by the peoples in this occupied land.

Majdal Shams, as per the Golan Heights annexation Law of 1981, and against U.N. consent, was considered by Israel as part of their territory, and, in turn, was subjugated to civilian Israeli law, administration, and jurisdiction. The majority of its residents are made up of Druze, a religious minority dispersed over a few villages in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Syrian Druze have refused to accept the Israeli citizenship which is available to them upon choice. As explained by my friend, in agreeing to Israeli citizenship, one has to also accept the illogical fact that his children would have to serve as part of the Israeli army in the likely case of a military draft, and consequently, would have to fight against their own homeland of Syria—an irrational mandate by any standards.

Moreover, it is paradoxical to hear residents of Majdal Shams introduce themselves as Syrians living in the occupied territory, albeit they are not permitted to visit Syria, the country of their original nationality. It is quite ironic that even though Damascus, the capital of Syria, lies only 60 KM (less than 40 miles) away from Majdal Shams, it has been and still remains a forbidden destination for the vast majority of Syrians living in the Golan Heights. Israeli law deems that if anyone leaves the occupied territory into Syrian borders, they are automatically forfeiting their right of return to their homes and land in the Golan Heights, with the exception of university students seeking free education in Syria and Druze clerics attending religious ceremonies (both of whom have to first be given approval for departure and re-entry by the Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs).

As depicted in the internationally acclaimed and award-winning film The Syrian Bride which happens to be filmed in Majdal Shams, when a bride or groom from the Golan Heights is to wed a Syrian, they immediately lose their right of return to their country of birth. Consequently, a wedding celebration is then transformed into a grieving ceremony as parents have to surrender their daughter or son to a land on which they can never tread. One means of reuniting family members is by travel to the neighbouring Jordan, an expensive trip unaffordable for many. Another means is to line up with bullhorns and binoculars across from one another on opposite sides of the Israeli / Syrian border separated by rows of steel wires, at a valley named the Shouting Hill, and to shout to one another! Here I would like for my readers to take a moment and reflect upon the fact that a grandparent’s only opportunity to see his or her grandchildren is through binoculars capturing an image from kilometres away.

My friends recount a tragic story which took place on March 7, 2008, where a 24-year-old woman, May Atef Sha’lan, married to a Syrian from Ein Qenya (a village in the occupied Golan Heights), became ill and was denied the basic right to see her mother while on her death bed, after Israeli authority declined the pleas of May’s mother to be granted a travel permit to simply be with her dying daughter in Syria. It is told that May was moaning on her death bed, “I want to see my mother. I am from Ein Qenya… Take me to see my mother…” But May’s appeals were never granted, and she died in agony, without her mother and beloved family, in the midst of helpless, silent tears in Syria.

Another repulsive example of the filthy laws in the Golan Heights is the uprooting of their trees at night from orchards and farms with the pretext that these lands represent Israeli territory. One of such many incidents took place last month, on April 23, 2009, for the second time in a farm in Baq’atha. The owner of the farm determinedly awaited, for many consecutive days, the arrival of Israeli forces whose only purpose was to denude and strip trees from their land so that they can become potential Jewish settlements. As they finally arrived, the owner called for help from his family and friends, and the forces were defeated by the people of Baq’atha and handed over peacefully to Israeli police in order avoid any future potential blame.

The stories go on and on, and the task of choosing one story over another is a most difficult one, as each story speaks of yet another poignant case of human suffering. Yet one story that I cannot but mention in this article is of the personal experience of my friends who immigrated from Majdal Shams to the United States in 1997. After residing in the U.S. for seven years, they sought to renew their travel documents at an Israeli Embassy in the U.S.; however, they were informed at the time of application that after a period of seven years of immigration, they would have to return to live in their homes in Majdal Shams to “renew” their residence and consequently become eligible for renewed travel documents, or else they lose their right to return and would be prohibited from visiting their village again. In order not to jeopardize their ties to their own homeland, my friends took on the burden of a year’s trip to Majdal Shams, and uprooted their children from the schools they attended in the U.S. at the time. Yet, the irony lies in the fact that any Jew, from any country in the world, has the right to live in Israel and claim immediate, automatic citizenship upon their arrival to Israel, regardless of place of birth, nationality, or foreign residence. Moreover, they are offered free housing and free land, possibly the homes and orchards of my friends.

I will end by posing the following questions: How is it possible that such violations to human rights are taking place, tolerated and, furthermore, legitimized under a country that claims itself democratic?

Despite being trailed closely by the starkest drift to the right in Israeli politics, the election of President Obama by American voters on the declared pledge of “change” has indeed led to a changed mood of diplomacy. The recent four-way ‘mini-summit’ concluded in Riyadh involving the heads of state of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Kuwait, and an earlier visit by John Kerry to Syria, following which, he discussed the possibility of “loosening certain sanctions” on Syria “in exchange for verifiable changes in behaviour,”¹ are supposedly indicative of this new wave of diplomacy.

Given this milieu of unprecedented regional diplomacy, it is easy to be deluded into thinking that the much awaited departure of former US president Bush has not only invigorated a new dynamism into diplomatic forays, but has also changed the political set of cards in play. In this respect, an immediate threat that faces the global peace movement is precisely this self-consoling expectation of dramatic change that would at once signal an end to all the precedents set by the previous Bush administration.

If history is anything to go by, then promises of change should be viewed with a measure of suspicion. When these promises emanate from an edifice of empire, a level of mistrust given age-old historical experience to the contrary is justified.² Yet, the global peace movement and wider grassroots activist circles were never informed by the subjectivity of suspicion when they rose against the failed policies of Bush and his cohorts, rather, their principled stands for justice were driven by a pursuit and appreciation of reality. It is therefore necessary to objectively analyse the conditions surrounding the “New Middle East” experiment that was openly declared in 2006, and contrast its basic frameworks against the early moves of the Obama administration.

In the summer of 1996, an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, issued a paper entitled: ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’.³ Contained in it was not only the blueprint for the invasion and overthrow of the Saddam regime but also a more comprehensive strategy of “redrawing the map of the Middle East”. Amongst the “prominent opinion makers” who contributed to the paper were the usual hawkish neo-cons and pro-Zionism advocates in the US: Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, James Colbert, David and Meyrav Wurmser, the latter of whom was a co-founder of the MEMRI project. More significantly, there remain three markedly relevant features in the substance of the so-called ‘clean break’ strategy that have the potential to decisively influence the shaping of the current Middle East.

Firstly, the ‘clean break’ strategy was specifically formulated for implementation by the Netanyahu-led Likud government, which has now been elected by the Israeli electorate. Its major premise of throwing aside the “land for peace” track for a romantically phrased “peace for peace” paradigm effectively dovetails with Netanyahu’s vision for how ‘peace’ is to be achieved in the Occupied Territories, with Syria and the wider Arab world.

Secondly, the paper places central importance on the role and strategic position of Syria. In it, its destabilization is suggested with the aim of undoing the nation’s perceived role as a lynchpin in this connected chain of “dangerous threats” in the region stretching from Iran to Southern Lebanon. Particular detail is given to this factor so much so that the paper moves from offering a geostrategic appraisal to providing a surmised methodological framework on how to destabilize and/or overthrow nations; suggesting an assortment of military direct/indirect strikes, using anti-Syrian proxies (both politically and militarily), embarking on a regional strategy to effectively ostracize the country, and finally launching a massive PR campaign that would demonize Syria and would thereby “remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime”. As peace activists, it is worth storing the above points in our deeper recesses because in addition to being expressly illegal according to norms of international law — not that we are under any delusions about whether or not the neo-cons respect any law — they also outline the general methods that are employed by empires in dealing with adversaries.

Finally, the role and efficacy of regional neighbours that are allied with the US, in fostering the right conditions and pretexts for implementing this new strategy is to remain paramount in achieving the desired results. These regional players can play a significant aiding role in shaping the “strategic environment” by “weakening, containing, and even rolling back” the threats posed by the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance.

Deconstructing the “New Middle East”

George W. Bush’s failed promise of a “global democratic revolution” following the “watershed event” of the “establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East”
⁴ did not only fail miserably, but instead led to several inescapable eventualities that remain a symbol of this grand strategy. Firstly, the politicization of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program in order to exert pressure on Iran and to contain its’ perceived threat to the stability of the region (read: desired geopolitical order). Secondly, the salience of sectarian and ethnic divisions on the Middle Eastern socio-political landscape. Thirdly, the formation of a so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ of nations constituting regional players that act as a front against the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance. Finally, the declaration of a “New Middle East” created an almost mythical worldview in the Israeli mindset, whether by design or accident, which believed that the Arab-Israeli question could not only be settled on unilateral terms but also decisively, once and for all, with sheer Herculean force. On all four accounts, the Obama administration has yet to hint at any significant “change” that requires the altering of these yardsticks which remain symbolic of the “New Middle East” agenda.

In spite of the deep economic crisis that has gripped world capitals, the historical ‘prerogatives’ (i. Natural resources, ii. Security of the state Israel, iii. Preservation of a certain regional geopolitical order which thereby realizes a significant chapter in wider US preponderance in the Eurasian space) held by the US for securing the strategic Middle East region remain firmly in place. The Middle East will thus remain a focal point of Obama’s foreign policy efforts. A recent talk by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a top foreign policy advisor to Obama, provides a keyhole premonition of the continuity of an age-old policy of confrontation and threat of military force against Iran.⁵ Writing for the Asia Times, Pepe Escobar disclosed this new US position, contained in a letter to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, as follows: “if you help us get rid of non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons, we’ll get rid of our missile shield”.⁶

The verbose politics of “clenched fists”⁷ should not leave the peace movement under any illusions about the nature of things to come, just as much as new Secretary of State Ms. Clinton is under no illusions about the next steps on the empire’s to-do list: “We’re under no illusions. Our eyes are wide open on Iran.”⁸

Heightened sectarian saliency in Middle Eastern politics cannot be viewed independently from a strategy of isolating Iran from regional politics. Selling anti-Iranian rhetoric to Arab kingdoms necessarily determines the nature of discourse toward the sizeable and strategically positioned Shia populations across the Persian Gulf rim. When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak pronounced in April of 2006 that “Shias are mostly always loyal to Iran and not the countries in which they live”, it was by no means a slip of the tongue but rather a well calculated move that even lead one of the ‘clean break’ strategy’s “prominent opinion makers” to label Shias in the Persian Gulf as “Iran’s Levant clients”.⁹

It is altogether not surprising on the back of this grand regional strategy, for the tiny emirate kingdom of Bahrain to accelerate a process of ‘demographic engineering’ by providing citizenship to extremist anti-Shia hotheads from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, to undercut its majority Shia population.¹⁰ Although the systematic marginalization of Shias reflects a deep-rooted policy of the Bahraini Al-Khalifa monarchy, nevertheless, one can neither ignore current justifications for this suppression on rationales of the “New Middle East” agenda, nor intentional American indifference to grave human rights violations which take place in a nation that hosts the central base for the Naval Command’s Fifth Fleet.

In the aftermath of recent clashes in Saudi Arabia, in which three Shia Saudi citizens were killed in the close precincts of the second-holiest site in Islam, a prominent Shia leader latched on to the occasion to highlight the deep-seated discrimination and marginalization of Shias. He also issued a resolute warning to the establishment by declaring in no uncertain terms that the “dignity” of the Shia population “is greater in worth than the unity” of the Kingdom.¹¹ Mai Yamani, a Saudi national and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, whilst writing about these clashes notes that the suppression of Shias constitutes “part of the Kingdom’s strategy to counter Iran’s bid for regional hegemony”.¹²

With respect to rising political sectarianism, the policy of the Obama administration has thus far been virtually identical in both respects, namely; in its sustenance of a political agenda that leads to heightened sectarian tensions on the one hand, and its deliberate disregard of sectarian-motivated agendas by regional ‘allies’ on the other, which effectively cement these divisions.

Late last December, Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal charted out his ‘path to peace’ for the Middle East in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post.¹³ The central concerns outlined in his vision for peace are not only symptomatic of those shared by the wider so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ of Arab nations, but they in fact also provide a good indication of the changing tides in the Persian Gulf that have been the cause of much unsettling for the likes of Saudi Arabia. In particular, these concerns revolve around two core headings: i) the future of the Arab Initiative, and ii) the growing influence of Iran.

Viewed from another angle, the apparent urgent emphasis provided to the Arab Initiative and the closing window of ‘opportunity’ for its implementation, reveals an interesting reality that reflects the successes achieved by the path of Resistance; a path that evidently stands starkly at odds with the gifted job-roles given to the so-called ‘Moderates’ in the region. The highly agitated Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance views a resistance that has forced concessions upon a hereunto invincible Israeli adversary as a major threat to their own thrones. These realities are not hidden from the Arab street, and the growing grassroots support for Hizbullah and Hamas are a testament of this shift.

The second concern i.e., the growing influence of Iran or what Prince Turki Al-Faisal conveniently terms ‘Iranian obstructionism’, bears many commonalities with the first but transcends it in one vital respect: Iran symbolizes the possibility of the success of the ‘alternate path’. In the Arab consciousness, Iran provides a successful paradigm of a state that is self-dependent and stands up to imperialism in spite of long years of imposed wars and backbreaking sanctions. The findings in last year’s poll carried out by the University of Maryland and Zogby International hardly come as a surprise in this regard.
¹⁴ Additionally, Iran has not been shy to recognize the path of resistance and in showing its’ unreserved support for it, whereas the standard position of the so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ of Arab nations has been to undermine the path of resistance. This factor has also played a major contributory role in developing a positive view of Iran on the Arab street.

On the basis of this outlook, the geostrategic importance of Syria as a nation that stands by the side of the resistance, as well as an Arab state that positions itself outside of the so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ and its chosen political agenda, becomes not only apparent but very significant. When President Bashar Al-Assad announced in the Doha Summit (during the height of the brutal war on Gaza) that the Arab Initiative was “dead” and all that remained was to “transfer the registry of this Initiative from the registry of the living to that of the dead”,¹⁵ it left the likes of Saudi Arabia shuffling their cards as they weighed their next options.

In very crude terms, the death of the Arab Initiative would at once spell the exclusion of the Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance from the Middle Eastern chessboard or at least mark their modest insignificance. The recent overtures made to Syria by the US and the Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance thus need to be viewed against this context. From the standpoint of the US and its Arab allies, the popular ‘public anarchy’ on the Arab street — in support of resistance movements — can no longer be contained except by fragmenting the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance, even if this were to require swallowing bitter pills.

The victory of the Netanyahu-Liebermann coalition in Israel presents an immense challenge to the Arab coalition’s attempts to effectively sell this façade of a viable ‘peace track’ to Syria and to the Arab world in general. Even by the shoddy standards of truth that we have become accustomed to in our times, the sudden metamorphosis of a racist-bigot like Liebermann, whose comments about the ‘transfer’ of Arabs are not concealed from the Arab world,¹⁶ into a ‘kingmaker’ for a track of peace comes across as simply ridiculous. In this respect, one of the salient but less spoken about roles that is presently being played out by the Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance, is its transformation into a mouthpiece replacement for Israeli silence.

Nevertheless, it is important to underline the mounting support within Israel for engaging in Syrian peace talks as evinced by the recent advice offered to Netanyahu by a panel consisting of “prominent figures who formerly served in key posts in the defense establishment, government and the business community”.¹⁷ Writing in a Ha’aretz op-ed, diplomatic editor Aluf Benn emphasised the need for Netanyahu’s government to accede to the track of the Arab initiative — a stance that is antithetical to the classical Likud position — by noting:

“Netanyahu can go further than previous prime ministers and announce that the Arab initiative is an unprecedented opportunity for closing ranks against the threat of Iran and the extremists in the region…”¹⁸

At any rate, selling an image of Israel as the sincere peacemaker at times and expansionist war-monger on others does little to straighten out any ‘path to peace’. On March 2nd 2009, the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now released a report saying that the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing had plans to build 73,302 housing units in the Occupied West Bank — of which 15,000 units have already been approved. The report noted that if all the plans are realized “the number of settlers in the Territories will be doubled”.¹⁹ In a confidential EU report leaked to the Guardian, Israel was noted to be “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem with present settlements expansion progressing at a “rapid pace”.²⁰ In the face of these terminal threats to the two-state solution, the Obama administration has responded with a timid and pathetic characterisation of Israel’s actions as “unhelpful”.²¹

The Challenges Ahead

Whether this geopolitical tug of war to redraw the battle lines in the sands of the Middle East will end up in the favour of the US, Israel and their Arab allies is yet to be seen. Recent comments by Syrian top officials indicate that Damascus is not about to be moved by mere words and promises of change.

Foreign Minister Walid Moallem underlined that Damascus would not accept any less than a complete return to the 1967 borders and respect for the natural rights of Palestine: “Syria would be willing to renew only indirect talks, on two conditions: Israel’s commitment to withdraw to the 1967 borders, as well as its commitment that the Syrian channel will not be used to harm the Palestinians.”²² Muhsin Bilal, the Syrian Information Minister, was less reserved with his choice of words when he declared that the victories exacted by the Lebanese and Palestinian resistances against the “Zionist” entity had botched the “New Middle East” agenda.²³

Regional developments such as the growing mediating role of a pragmatic Qatar and increasing Turkish buoyancy, have also worked in the favour of the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance by somewhat distorting the traditional ‘power blocs’. In addition to these regional changes, a sense of Syrian ‘realism’ in dealing with a ‘defeated’ Israel, augmented by the natural dynamism and unequal grassroots support for Iran and resistance movements in the region, present a formidable and hitherto undefeated opponent.

To peace activists, the success or failure of this political squabbling is insignificant when placed against the grave human price that is almost certain to result from the pursuit of such a political agenda. For Western politicians who still value rational strategic planning; the analysis of ‘facts’ — and not engineered ‘truths’ — and their synthesis in forming a balanced perspective of reality, the inescapable calamities that would be the necessary resultant of adopting this aggressive, confrontational political agenda cannot be overlooked.

At this juncture, it is important to highlight a common fallacy that is epidemic in the Western media and unfortunately, one that has also trickled into the discourse of certain sections of the peace movement. Neo-con and pro-Zionist voices were quick to highlight that any sort of engagement with the likes of Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas (collectively homogenized as radical ‘Islamists’) poses a high-risk to the ‘civilized world’. These radical Islamists, we were told, can simply not be engaged with; talks with Iran would run parallel to the building of the ‘bomb’, talks with Hizbullah would create a ‘state within a state’, engaging with Hamas would signal the exclusion of (the illegitimate) president Mahmoud Abbas.²⁴ Although the truth is far distant from these sensationally irrational spurts, unfortunately, the ‘radical Islamist’ tag has remained firmly embedded in building perspectives towards the likes of Hizbullah and Hamas within some quarters of the peace movement.

In addition to being a classical tactic to ‘otherize’ the enemy if a process to ‘dehumanize’ it fails, we should note that despite adhering to a different kind of politics, these entities are neither irrational political players nor is their existence qualified by a ‘culture of death’. For the sake of example, the Hizbullah resistance movement overlooks an extensive social programs network that is virtually unequalled throughout the entire Middle East. Its longstanding record of peaceful coexistence and a highly-advanced integration paradigm (infitah) within the public sphere of a multi-sectarian Lebanese topography are doubted by none. The same however, cannot be said of US-Saudi sponsored Salafist client groups in Lebanon for whom the tag ‘Islamist’ fits rather well.²⁵ All in all, resistance movements like Hizbullah and Hamas enjoy a great deal of popular support on the Arab streets. They have also shown a great degree of tolerance towards the West in spite of the long list of grievances that have resulted from negative Western interference in their countries. Here, it is highly beneficial to refer to a speech delivered by Nadine Rosa-Rosso at the ‘International Forum for Resistance, Anti-Imperialism, Solidarity between Peoples and Alternatives’ that was held earlier this year in Beirut.²⁶

In summary, the politicization of the Iranian nuclear programme and the recycling of pretexts by Israel to launch regional wars should not be viewed as haphazard aberrations, but rather as logical consequences of a grand regional geopolitical strategy. The “New Middle East” agenda is the infrastructure upon which an imperial superstructure of hegemony, sustained by the disregard of law and rule of brute force, is raised to control this region. Human rights activists and lawyers who advocate against the innumerable abuses that have occurred so far in this “War on Terror” cannot ignore this political agenda which is in fact the origin of all ills.

One cannot speak of dealing with the looming threat of military strikes against Iran without first dealing with the “New Middle East” agenda. Similarly, one cannot speak of a post-Bush era or lavishly mark “new beginnings” without first doing away with the lasting remnants of a policy that has brought on so much suffering to the region, and continues to leave it on a knife’s edge. Strangely, most would say criminally, the experiences of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq appear to have done little to develop a more informed US foreign policy in its dealings with this region. If there is any special disgust within the global peace movement with respect to these failed wars, it lies in the fear that a repeat is as likely to occur.

With the proclaimed advent of a “new beginning” by the Obama administration, there is a pressing need for the peace movement to engage in a comprehensive study of the “New Middle East” agenda in its different aspects and dimensions. Our collective failure to critically examine this agenda on the one hand, and to circulate its underlying assumptions and necessary consequences to the Western public on the other, will inevitably expose the peace movement to accusations of adherence to an outdated, dogmatic discourse.

The “New Middle East” agenda is inherently confrontational and raises the spectre of war in the region. For as long as it remains on the table, the whole Middle East will teeter on the brink of unspeakable calamities.

1. ‘Kerry calls for easing US sanctions against Syria’, Boston Globe, March 5th 2009
2. ‘Generic Invader Nonsense – Obama on Iraq’, Media Lens, March 5th 2009
3. ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, June 1996
4. ‘Bush demands Mid-East democracy’, BBC News, November 6th 2003
5. ‘US-Russian partnership will end shield row’, Press TV, March 16th 2009
6. ‘The Obama-Medvedev Turbo Shuffle’, Asia Times Online, March 5th 2009
7. ‘From ‘axis of evil’ to ‘clenched fist’’, Asia Times Online, February 28th 2009
8. ‘Hillary Clinton offers handshake of friendship to Syria’, The Times, March 3rd 2009
9. ‘The Iran-Hamas Alliance’, Hudson Institute, October 4th 2007
10. ‘Bahraini rulers importing extremism’, Press TV, February 15th 2009
11. ‘Thank Sheikh al-Nimr instead of imprisoning him’, Rasid News Service, March 17th 2009
12. ‘Saudi Arabia’s Shias Stand Up’, Project Syndicate, March 2009
13. ‘Peace for the Middle East’, Washington Post, December 26th 2008
14. ‘Nasrallah most admired Arab leader’, Press TV, April 17th 2008
15. ‘President al-Assad at Gaza Summit: Gaza Destiny is ours, Arab Peace Initiative Dead, Standing by our People and Resistance in Gaza with all Available Means’, Syrian Arab News Agency, January 18th 2009
16. ‘Liebermann, Avigdor – Israeli politician and deputy prime minister’, Electronic Intifada
17. ‘Netanyahu advisors tell him to push ahead with Syria track’, Ha’aretz, March 16th 2009
18. ‘A way out for Netanyahu’, Ha’aretz
19. ‘The Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to construct at least 73,300 housing units in the West Bank’, Peace Now, 3rd March 2009
20. ‘Israel annexing East Jerusalem’, says EU, Guardian, 7th March 2009
21. ‘Criminal Unhelpfulness’, Agence Global, 18th March 2009
22. ‘Syrian FM: Still at war with Israel’, Ynet News, 22nd March 2009
23. ‘Bilal: Arab solidarity in confronting challenges’, Syrian Arab News Agency, 18th March 2009
24. ‘What do the financial crisis and US Middle East policy have in common?’, Jerusalem Post, 6th December 2008
25. ‘The Redirection’, The New Yorker, 5th March 2007
26. ‘The Left And Support For Anti-Imperialist Islamist Resistance’, Counter Currents, 11th February 2009

Although the recently departed Bush administration made the approach described above into a diplomatic art form that drew more from television wrestling than any treatise on statecraft, they did not invent this approach. Nor will they be the last US administration to utilize it. Already, Obama’s Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has made comments regarding Iran that are equivalent to any threat made under George Bush’s watch. Furthermore, the men and women doing Obama’s work in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world are following the same trail already worn down by Bush’s people. Despite the hopes of millions who voted for Barack Obama, very little seems to have changed in the way Washington deals with its enemies. Into this impasse comes commentator and Mideast scholar Juan Cole and his new book titled Engaging the Muslim World.

Nothing less than a call to use some common sense in dealing with that part of the world Washington defines as the Muslim World, Cole takes a sweeping look at the history of the region from Egypt to Iran; from Pakistan to Gaza; and asks what it is that causes Washington to deal with the peoples of these nations in a manner often quite different from the manner in which it deals with other nations. Cole ends each chapter with a brief series of suggestions as to how Washington might better approach the problems it believes exists with regard to the issues of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, and the various Islamic popular movements that have all recently been placed on Washington’s enemies list. He asks questions that need to be asked yet seem to not even be considered. Why are US troops still in Iraq? Why does a nation (the US) that has the notion of religious freedom encoded into its constitution insist on making the religious beliefs of these nations a cause for enmity? If Washington won’t negotiate with its enemies, than who will it negotiate with? If Tel Aviv and Washington support democracy, why do they refuse to acknowledge the democratic victory of Hamas?

Despite bringing up these issues, the real strength of Cole’s book is in the history he provides. Written for a western audience, the history surveyed here covers the genesis of the Islamist movements, their interaction with governments both local and internationally, yet it does not dwell on the religious aspects of those movements. instead, it discusses the political and economic role these movements have played and continue to play in the overall history of the nations involved. The anti-imperialist nature of the movements is discussed as is their popularity among the Muslim world precisely for their anti-imperialism. Underlying the historical narrative herein is a sincere and usually successful discussion of the complexities involved in that history. Unlike the dichotomous version of the world presented by the Bush administration and its allies, where Washington leads the good guys against the bad guys of Islam, Cole’s nuanced presentation of the history and current situation of US dealings with the Muslim world provide the reader with a clearer understanding of not only what is at stake, but also what is really going on. His perspective removes the often overwrought fears that have predominated mainstream US discourse on the subject at hand.

If we are to have a future world where peace prevails, it will require Washington and its allied governments to coexist with the the part of the world we know as the “Muslim world.” The approach that demanded its subjugation to Washington’s whims has been shown to be bankrupt. To achieve coexistence, one must have understanding. Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World is the ideal primer.

Joshua Frank: Afshin, can you tell us a little about Press TV? How long has the station been on the air?

Afshin Rattansi: Certainly more than a year. It’s an initiative by the Iranian government to counter some of the more crazy assumptions that other international channels make about the Middle East. Of course, given the crippling siege of Gaza at the moment, international media can’t even get into the place so that makes Press TV uniquely able to cover something that the rest of the world’s media seems to have forgotten. The “narrative”, as the fashionable post po-mo word goes, seems to be that the U.S. made a mistake by invading Iraq rather than the whole operation being an international war crime.

If Press TV can redress the balance a bit, it would be good. Also, wars in Africa are covered on other stations as if they are purely about “black people fighting each other” just as famines are somehow natural phenomena. Little is told about the corporate background to conflicts in a continent in which the positive stories seem to be about animals and “entrepreneurs” somehow battling, atomistically, against the tide.

Frank: You aren’t a native of Iran, so how did you get involved with Press TV?

Rattansi: There may be some Iranian in me! Afshin is an Iranian name and I think there is a possibility my roots are from the a magician’s castle in Alamut but that’s a long story and goes back a thousand years or so,

But seriously, I had been at Bloomberg News, hired to revamp things, after my time at CNN International and Al Jazeera Arabic and, most enlightening of all, the Today programme at the BBC. The mainstream coverage in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was very poor even if Today and its source, the late David Kelly, tried its best to allow listeners another view of what the British government was spouting about WMD in Iraq. It was odd as twenty years ago I was accused of being against an ally, Saddam Hussein. I had helped make a documentary for Channel 4 in the UK about how Western companies, in particular architectural firms akin to Albert Speer acolytes, were aiding
Saddam.

The British government didn’t like it at all and yet, once I was working at Today, my colleagues and I were being accused of being apologists for Saddam because we could tell that the government was lying about WMD. Blair’s people unleashed an onslaught that led to the resignations of all the most senior staff at the BBC. I left for the Jazeera Arabic programme, Top Secret, which identified the 911 attackers when Osama bin Laden himself contacted the programme to name the perpetrators. They would be caught even as we ran the trailers.

Well, after that story the Qatari Al Jazeera Arabic was chastened as we prepared for the launch of the English-language channel. As for my attempt at trying to get Bloomberg to avoid bluster and actually cover what was well known – the impending financial catastrophe – it ended in failure. In between, at CNN, coverage of the financial world was laughable. I remember talking to financial editor, Todd Benjamin who was nonchalantly cheerleading multinationals without a care in the world for the house of cards.

It was in this context, that I was getting worried that the same mistakes were going to be made all over again, vis a vis Iran. For me, the deaths of more than a million people in Iraq let alone the disastrous interventions in Afghanistan were axiomatic. Reading Seymour Hersh had me worried and I still don’t know if he was being used. But Iran was the story. Thankfully, that’s died down a little. But going to Tehran seemed a responsible thing to do.

Frank: Do you think the mood has changed because of the forthcoming change in administrations here in the United States? What’s the perception among Iranians about Barack Obama?

Rattansi: I think the mood hasn’t changed at all. Certainly, Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State and the possibility of Dennis Ross and Richard Holbrooke hardly inspires much confidence. Nevertheless, there was a certain amount of heat generated by the electoral victory of Barrack Obama.

Frank: How can people in the US tune in to Press TV, and why do you think it’s important that they should?

Rattansi: Press TV is available in the U.S. through special servers via the internet at presstv.com. I think the audience will certainly get a very different perspective to that on other channels of world events and they may be surprised to see that many of the people interviewed on the channel – from Noam Chomsky to Gore Vidal to Amy Goodman – are all American.

Press TV is available in Europe on Sky Channel 515.

When one peruses the transition team’s website, they can see what their intentions are regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. The plan’s for Iraq are summarized this way: “Under the Obama-Biden plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions.” The size of the force is undetermined as is its exact mission. Complementary to the plans for Iraq is the Obama team’s plan to “dedicate more (military) resources to the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.” Recently, antiwar organizer Ashley Smith of the International Socialist Organization stated the present situation rather succinctly: “The antiwar movement has an immense opportunity with the election of Barack Obama. His victory has raised expectations not only of an end to the Iraq war, but also an end to the Afghan War and the many other barbaric policies of the Bush Administration. However, the establishment and the corporative power brokers are pressuring Obama to rehabilitate American imperialism so that it is better able to dominate the planet against its regional and global rivals.”

At this point in the transition from Bush to Obama, there seems to be a wait-and-see attitude among the US populace. Folks who voted for Obama seem to be transfixed by the mere fact of his victory while some of those who opposed him are already making plans on how to get rid of him. Many of those who voted for him because he said he would withdraw troops from Iraq are unfortunately diminishing the importance of his statements calling for an expansion of the US military in Afghanistan and his public stances against Iran and in support of Israeli bellicosity. This wait-and-see attitude by these voters seems to be paving the way for a continuation of the war policies that were undertaken by the Bush administration.

If there was ever a time for a renewed vigor in the antiwar movement, that time is now. Leia Petty of the national student organization Campus Antiwar Network put it this way in an email: “National mass mobilizations give expression to widespread discontent and provide an opportunity to organize the unorganized…. The last national protest was nearly two years ago, meaning that many students in our organization and on our campuses have never experienced marching and chanting in the streets alongside hundreds of thousands of people. Protest is the primary expression of our demands and the building block of our movement.”

The past two years have been a quiet time for that movement. There have been no major national demonstrations since March 15th, 2007 when 40,000 people marched on the Pentagon. Prior to that was a protest of over 150,000 in DC (with another 100,000 on the West Coast) on January 27th of that year. Both of these protests took place in the wake of the November 2006 congressional elections that saw the Democrats take over both houses of Congress in an election that was essentially a referendum against the war. It was a referendum that was to be baldly ignored by the very folks who were elected to carry it out. Instead of a withdrawal plan, we saw an escalation of the war via the “surge.” This escalation brought about an increase in Iraqi and US deaths, while further dividing the country of Iraq into sectarian enclaves, displacing millions more Iraqis, and pushing the people of that country further into poverty. Now, almost two years later, there are more US troops in Iraq than there were before the 2006 elections and Washington is still trying to impose an agreement on the Green Zone government that pretends to promise a withdrawal by 2011, but in reality has more loopholes regarding that withdrawal than the current US tax laws do for the oil companies. In Afghanistan, the occupation grows more brutal daily, as US airstrikes kill and maim civilians and US Predator drones wreak their destruction and death in Afghanistan and, increasingly, in Pakistan as well.

During the weekend of December 12th and 13th, 2008, the national antiwar coalition United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is holding it national meeting in Chicago. This meeting is certain to discuss the nature of the antiwar movement in the coming year. Already, the other national antiwar network ANSWER has called for a national protest in Washington, DC on March 21, 2009. The third national network, known as the National Assembly to End the War is circulating a letter asking UFPJ to co-sponsor such a protest. Some of the National Assembly’s members, like antiwar activist Marilyn Lewin of Boston will be attending the UFPJ conference as individuals and members of various local antiwar groups. When asked why she planned to attend, Ms. Lewin told me that “the long rift between UFPJ and ANSWER and the absence of mass mobilizations has been a serious setback. I will be attending the UFPJ National Assembly to call for UFPJ to join with ANSWER and others to form a broad, independent, ad hoc coalition to build mass mobilizations in Washington, San Francisco and other cities on March 21, marking six years of war in Iraq.”

In a continuation of its pointless refusal to work with ANSWER, UFPJ has so far refused to go along. Instead, the UFPJ leadership has called for a series of undefined, vague actions the week before. Separate actions make very little sense. The time for a coordinated mass national action by all elements of the US antiwar movement is this coming spring. The US military presence in Iraq will be heading into its seventh year. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House when it comes to this issue. Nor does it matter if Washington and the Iraqi Green Zone government have agreed that US forces will leave by 2011. As we have seen before, agreements like the Status of Forces Agreement mean very little when they don’t serve Washington’s needs.

It is extremely rare in US history that a president or Congress ended a hostile overseas military action without massive public pressure. Besides the fact that Iraq is considered too important to Washington’s plans, there are just too many pressures from those whose income and careers depend on continuing such adventures to end these things. If and only if the antiwar movement revitalizes itself and organizes the majority of Americans that oppose the war/occupation in Iraq will it be ended.

The same applies to the situation in Afghanistan. That mission has failed. The resistance against Washington’s occupation continues to grow. More and more Afghan civilians die every week from US bombs and missiles while the Karzai government grows weaker and weaker. This government, put into place to help the US project its power into Central Asia in order to control the Caspian Sea natural gas and oil, has less internal support than the al-Maliki regime in Baghdad. It is time for the occupying forces to end their murderous support of whichever warlord is willing to take Washington’s money. That nation’s people will only begin to have a chance to live without war or reactionary Islamist rule after US and NATO forces begin to leave the country. Not only should the various wings of the national antiwar movement organize a single demonstration in the spring of 2009, they should include a call for an immediate US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in their demands.

The election of Obama after years of Bush and Cheney has created a historical moment. Those who voted for Obama hoping that he will end the war(s) and move away from the imperial aggression of the past decades can not merely sit back and wait for Obama and the Congress to do this on their own. Now more than ever those of us who oppose the US wars around the world and Washington’s ever-expanding military presence from Latin America to Asia must make our opposition known. That means we must take it into the streets, the halls of Congress, our workplaces and schools and our shopping malls and churches. In short, we must revive the antiwar movement with the same commitment and emotion that so many of its members gave to getting the GOP out of Washington. Along the way, we also need to bring along those who became involved politically for the first time during Obama’s run and who also oppose the US wars around the world. An important first step in this drive is for the organizations that consider themselves to be the leadership of the antiwar movement to work towards a single massive protest on both US coasts in March 2009. Anything less will be a squandering of opportunity on a colossal scale.

In a similar raid last month, US Special Forces landed in a village in Pakistan and killed several Pakistanis. When protests over this raid reached to Islamabad, the Pentagon decided it would only use predator drones to do their killing in Pakistan for the time being. Although the reason given is that the Pentagon wants to recognize Pakistani sensitivities to foreign troops killing people uninvited on their territory, one can assume that another, perhaps greater, reason is the Pentagon knows it could very well lose a few men if they land in that area again. As everyone knows, dead GIs never play well on the US television news no matter how they are spun.

The crassness of this calculation is as old as airpower if not older. Airborne missiles and bombs are somehow considered by those who launch them to be less immoral than raids involving soldiers on the ground–raids that often incorporate the killing of civilians. This is despite the fact that ground raids rarely kill as many civilians as air strikes, be they predator drones, carpet bombing or something in between.

Despite the clear disregard for civilian life inherent in these raids whether airborne or otherwise, the aspect of these raids that is potentially the most dangerous is the blatant disregard for national borders shown by the Pentagon. This isn’t a band of terrorists that is crossing national borders to kill and destroy. It is the largest military in the world–the military of a nation that considers its borders inviolable. Yet, it seems to have little regard for those of other nations, allies or foes. Indeed, an anonymous US official was quoted in a Washington Post article on October 28, 2008 “You have to clean up the global threat that is in your back yard, and if you won’t do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our hands.” By global threat, the official obviously meant a threat to the designs of Washington for the globe, not a threat against the planet itself. As most readers are well aware, Washington often confuses its security with that of the world and, by doing so, places the entire planet at even greater risk every time it acts to preserve that security.

Another aspect of this raid is the use of Iraq as a launching pad for the operation. This flies in the face of the post-Saddam Iraq “constitution” and is one of the reasons so many Iraqis oppose the Status of Forces Agreement currently being negotiated in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Raids on neighboring countries that use Iraq as a base put Iraq in an untenable position with its neighbors and ties the government of Iraq irrevocably tot he United States, even if it does not know about the raids in advance. This is one more reason all US forces must leave Iraq. As long as US troops remain in the country, they will use Iraq as a base to plan and conduct operations outside of Iraq’s borders, no matter what the Green Zone government says.

This time around, the Green Zone government initially supported the attack, although later statements seem to have reversed that support. One can be reasonably certain, however, that if the US launched a raid on Iran, the Iraqis might not be so agreeable. Given their supine position to Washington, however, their words of protest would be without any power. Washington knows this and the Green Zone government accepts it, however begrudgingly. After all, what are they going to do? Bite the hand that put them in their fancy kennel?

Speaking of supine creatures, why does Congress let the Pentagon continue these raids into countries Washington is theoretically not at war with? Why is there no protest from the Democrats who were elected on the understanding that they would begin removing US troops from Iraq almost two years ago? To be succinct, let me put it this way. One reason is because the Bush administration has successfully linked the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to their so-called “war on terror.” By doing so, they can do whatever they want. If one recalls, the wording of the resolution that began this deadly imperial episode states very clearly:

“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

The other reason is the failure of the American people to maintain a popular movement against the two occupations. Because of this failure, the occupations/wars continue and, as the aforementioned raids into Pakistani and Syrian territory make clear, there are still very few limits to their scope.