Former CIA officer: US to attack Iran within 6 months

Arabic as a Terrorist Language

The Right-Wing’s War on the Gibran Academy

Arabic as a Terrorist Language

By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

A good friend and former Professor of mine always began his classes on the developing world with an introduction to Islam. One of the first points driven home in the class, semester after semester, was the difference between Islam and Arabic. While the terms are obviously not synonymous (one being a religion and the other a language), this basic distinction is disregarded in recent fundamentalist efforts to demonize not only Islam, but the Arabic language itself.

I wanted to believe that we’d come far enough in this country that Muslim-Americans and non-citizens alike don’t have to suffer under irrational hatred, fanaticism, and repression. But for America’s small, but influential right-wing minority, this seems too much to ask.

I am referring to the racist war that has been declared on the Kahlil Gibran International Academy (in New York), and most specifically its Principal, Debbie Almontaser. The Gibran Academy is the first public institution in the U.S. committed specifically to learning the Arabic language. But the way the school has been attacked in media diatribes, one would think it was named after Osama bin Laden, rather than an uncontroversial, but well known poet. The Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran is best known for his classic work, The Prophet, written over 80 years ago and translated into over 20 languages. While Gibran’s works focused heavily on the corruption of Christian clergies and churches of his day, his other common themes include love, religion, life and death, and philosophy.

The Gibran Academy “controversy” comes at a time when Americans are desperately in need of shedding their parochialism of foreign cultures and languages. As the United States has become an international pariah during its occupation of Iraq, attacks on diversity can do little but strengthen American isolationism and ignorance. Americans are consistently rated in world opinion polls along with Iran and North Korea in terms of likeability, and incidents such as the Gibran protest are unlikely to improve its image. The anti-Arabic campaign is being spearheaded by notable reactionaries such as Daniel Pipes and Alicia Colon, as well as newspapers in the Big Apple including the New York Post and New York Sun.

But what, you might ask, are the specific crimes committed by Almontaser and the academy, deemed so egregious as to warrant the right-wing’s wrath? Daniel Pipes lays out his case in a number of editorials written in the NY Sun in the last few months. Pipes claims as “fact” that “Islamic institutions [which Gibran Academy is not], whether schools or mosques, have a pattern of extremism and even violence.” He argues that “learning Arabic in-and-of-itself promotes an Islamic outlook,” as “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” Pipes feels that the teaching of Arabic may lead to “moral decay,” since “Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam, an expectation I encountered while studying Arabic in Cairo in the 1970s.”

In another Op-Ed for the NY Sun, Alicia Colon follows up on Pipe’s statements, protesting that “This proposal [for an Arabic language school] is utter madness, considering that five years after September 11, ground zero is still a hole in the ground and we’re bending over backwards to appease those sympathetic to individuals who would destroy us again.” The editors at the NY Post also deem the anxieties over the school as “right on target.”

Pipe’s and Colon’s anger appear to be derived, in part, from Principal Almontaser’s alleged “support for terrorism.” Almontaser was demonized for initially refusing to condemn a t-shirt with the slogan “Intifada NYC,” which was being sold by the group “Arab Women Active in Art and Media,” which shares an office with another group that has ties to Almontaser (a rather tenuous and tendentious “connection,” I know). Aside from the “crime” of having this connection with the group in question, Almontaser has also committed the second crime of explaining the meaning of the word Intifada: “it basically means ‘shaking off.’ That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic. I understand it is developing a negative connotation due to the uprising in the Palestinian-Israeli areas. I don’t believe the intention is to have any of that kind of [violence] in New York City. I think it’s pretty much an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City societyand shaking off oppression.”

This statement, while seemingly innocent enough, is deemed irrefutable proof of Almontaser’s “gratuitous apology for suicide terrorism,” in Pipe’s own words, and as evidence of “warmongering,” in the eyes of the NY Post editors. Normally whenever I read such fanatical claims amongst American right-wingers, I don’t bother to respond. Pipes and Colon’s claims may be too stupid to merit a rebuttal, but the effectiveness of such attacks is truly disturbing for anyone committed to multiculturalism and democracy. Racist rhetoric has been allowed to dominate media discourse for too long, and has often been successful in setting the terms of debate ­ as erroneous as those terms may be. Consider, for example, an August 26 report from the Chicago Tribune on the disputed school. The story claims that “at the core of the debate [over the school] is a linguistic disconnect.” This may be what apologists for Pipes want the public to believe, but the claim has no bearing on reality whatsoever. For one thing, there has been no “debate” going on here, only racist bullying. American media commentary has been hijacked by pundits who have zero commitment to intellectual debate of the issues, and even less commitment to understanding the nuances that come along with learning about foreign cultures and languages. That the claims of Pipes and others could even be taken seriously by New York political leaders and media reporters is a sign of just how far our intellectual culture has deteriorated.

Consider a few of the following facts that are either ignored or twisted in the current media-political “debate” over the school.

1. While the Kahlil Gibran academy has been attacked for indirectly teaching Islam in a public institution, Gibran himself was not even Muslim, he was Christian Arab. Why the administrators of the school would have consciously chosen Gibran as an inspiration for an “Islamic school” is never explained in media debate (and why would devout Muslims enroll in a school named after a Christian poet expecting to get an Islamic education anyway?). One would hardly know about the school’s non-Muslim roots, however, after reading Pipe’s tirades.

2. The official language of the most populous Muslim country in the world (Indonesia) is not even an Arabic, but Bahasa Indonesia. One wouldn’t know this either by reading the NY Sun or NY Post editorials. That there’s nothing inherently linking Islam with Arabic is a lesson Americans should be taught as children, although it is not included in most civics discourses in this country.

3. Contrary to the claims of Colon and Pipes, Almontaser was indeed correct that the word “Intifada” means “uprising” or “shaking off.” The word is not inherently tied to military attacks on civilians. I used to make this same point when I taught Middle East politics, although I would also presumably be denigrated as a terrorist sympathizer for my failure to declare war on the Arabic language.

4. The nation for which Pipes reserves most of his anger is Palestine ­ as he attacks Palestinian suicide bombers who target Israeli civilians. While predominantly Arabic speaking, Palestine retains a sizable non-Muslim minority, another inconvenient fact ignored by Pipes. Twenty-five percent of West Bank residents are Christian and Jewish speaking Arabs. Such a reality would be deemed little more than a paradox, however, by ignorant minds vilifying the Arabic language as Muslim in orientation.

Claiming that the Arabic language is inherently Muslim makes about as much sense as claiming that English is inherently Christian. But this doesn’t mean that such efforts to confuse the public are ineffective. As of late August (and in light of a five month campaign by the “Stop Madrassa Coalition,” of which Pipes is a part) Almontaser has been pressured to step down as Principal of the Gibran Academy. Furthermore, Pipes and other members of his coalition have vowed not to end their campaign until the academy is permanently closed. The New York Times reports that, in light of the protests, “the chancellor of schools, Joel Klein, is considering other locations for the school [currently in Brooklyn], or even postponing the opening for a year.” The attacks, and many others of their kind, have also left a terrible psychic scar on many Arab-Americans forced to endure unbridled American racism. Sadly, U.S. “multiculturalism” seems to make room only those with enough political and social capital to effectively fight back against media and public prejudice and xenophobia. Even Arab-American citizens are deemed as “outsiders” or “foreigners” within such a twisted value system.

It remains to be seen whether the racist views of Pipes and his ilk are representative of the American public as a whole. How Americans react to anti-Arab/anti-Muslim political-cultural campaigns will do much in determining the status of Arab Americans in the future, and the vigor of our democracy. One thing seems clear though: as long as a loud minority of reactionaries is allowed to hijack public dialogue and debate, not much is going to change.

Anthony DiMaggio has taught Middle East Politics and American Government at Illinois State University. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the “War on Terror” (forthcoming December 2007). He can be reached at adimag2@uic.edu

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/dimaggio08302007.html

Palestinian children die in Israeli tank shell blast

Three Palestinian children have been killed after an Israeli tank shell hit northern Gaza, Palestinian doctors say. Israel’s military confirmed it launched an attack, saying it had targeted people setting up a rocket launcher.

Doctors said two boys aged 10 and 12 died of shrapnel wounds. A 12-year-old girl who was critically injured in the blast died also in hospital.

The Israeli army expressed sorrow for the deaths of the children, but said it held militant groups responsible.

“We identified and fired at several rocket launchers aimed at Israel in the Beit Hanoun industrial zone,” an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

“We also identified several suspicious looking people fiddling with the rocket launchers before we fired. The army regrets terror organisations’ cynical use of children,” she added.

Cousins

Palestinian health officials told news agencies the two boys were cousins Mahmoud Ghazal, 10, and Yehiya Ghazal, aged 12.

The girl was named as Sara Ghazal, 10, another cousin.

The area around Beit Hanoun is frequently used by Palestinian militants to launch rocket attacks against southern Israel.

According to Palestinian medical officials, eight children have now been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank in just over a week.

Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6969111.stm

CA Congressman rips Bush, hints at North American Union

1 million Shiites ordered out of Karbala

At least 35 deaths in rioting; U.S. troops battle al-Qaida in Khalis

BAGHDAD – More than 1 million pilgrims were ordered to leave the Shiite holy city of Karbala on Tuesday and police imposed a curfew after two days of violence — including raging gunbattles between rival militias — claimed at least 35 lives during a religious festival.

Nearly 200 people were wounded, security officials said, and the government sent reinforcements from Baghdad to quell growing unrest and help clear the city.

Security officials told The Associated Press that Mahdi Army gunmen, loyalists of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, attacked guards around the two Karbala shrines that were under the protection of the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

In telephone calls to reporters in Karbala, gunfire and exploding mortar shells could be heard.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said “entrances and exits to Karbala have been secured and more forces are on the way from other provinces,” including Baghdad. The other officials said buses had been dispatched to Karbala to take pilgrims out of the city.

Gunshots rang out Tuesday in the area near the Shiite shrines which are the focal point of celebrations marking the birthday of the 12th and last Shiite imam, who disappeared in the 9th century. The festival was to have reached its high point Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Thirty of the dead were killed in Tuesday’s fighting, five others died in an outbreak of violence Monday night pilgrims tried to push past frustratingly slow security checkpoints near the Imam al-Hussein mosque.

He called the gunmen who fought police “criminals,” adding that the curfew was imposed because of fears for the pilgrims.

A member of the city council said the center of town was in chaos with pilgrims running in all directions to escape the gunfire. No one, he said, was sure who was doing the shooting. He said a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near the shrine.

“We don’t know what’s going on,” said the councilman, who would not allow use of his name for security reasons. “All we know is the huge numbers of pilgrims was too much for the checkpoints to handle and now there is shooting.”

AP Television News pictures from the city, 50 miles south of Baghdad, of the Monday night melee showed pilgrims running helter-skelter as gunfire, apparently police shooting into the air, rang out in the streets near the mosque.

Al-Qaida battle
North of Baghdad, hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi forces backed by helicopters and jet fighters killed 33 Sunni insurgents who were holding back the water supply to the Shiite town of Khalis, the American command said in a statement Tuesday.

The assault began before dawn on Monday when a joint force was landed by helicopter in the village of Gubbiya, 10 miles east of Khalis. The assault force killed 13 fighters and attack aircraft killed 20 others, the military said. The area is known to be controlled by al-Qaida in Iraq. Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, has been the scene of repeated Sunni insurgent bombings and mortar attacks.

“The objective of the mission was to open the spillway, which regulates water flow to the town of Khalis, restoring the essential service of water,” the statement said.

The assault uncovered three weapons caches, led to the capture of three men and “water is currently flowing unimpeded to Khalis,” the military said. The statement did not say if any U.S. or Iraqi soldiers were killed or wounded.

A Bradley Fighting Vehicle was seen engulfed in flames at the side of the road leading to Baghdad Airport Tuesday morning. The U.S. military said the armored vehicle had suffered an undetermined mechanical fault and none of the crew was hurt.

Fallujah mosque bombed
In Fallujah, the Sunni city 40 miles west of Baghdad, mourners buried 11 victims of a mosque suicide bombing Monday night. Ten people were wounded in the attack which police said targeted an anti-al-Qaida Sunni sheik who had just returned from Syria.

Meanwhile, suspected Sunni gunmen kept up attacks on pilgrims traveling to and from Karbala for the Shabaniyah festival, which marks the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th and last Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century. Devout Shiites believe he will return to Earth to restore peace and harmony.

A boy was shot to death and his father was wounded as they drove home from Karbala. Separately, gunmen opened fire randomly on vehicles returning to Baghdad, wounding two pilgrims in a small bus. And a sniper opened fire on pilgrims in southern Baghdad, wounding four. The shootings were reported by local police who refused to give their names because they were not authorized to release the information.

var url=location.href;var i=url.indexOf(‘/did/’) + 1;if(i==0){i=url.indexOf(‘/print/1/’) + 1;}if(i==0){i=url.indexOf(‘&print=1′);}if(i>0){url = url.substring(0,i);document.write(‘URL: ‘+url+’

‘);if(window.print){window.print()}else{alert(‘To print his page press Ctrl-P on your keyboard \nor choose print from your browser or device after clicking OK’);}}Source: MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12773602/

Resistance is Impossible–But Not Futile

One Dictatorship, Two Parties

Resistance is Impossible–But Not Futile

By BEN TRIPP

Is absolute power concentrated in an autocratic ruler or clique in your government?

Does the leader of your country adopt any of these roles: judge, jury, or executioner?

Does he have a moustache?

If the answer to one or more of these questions is “yes”, you may be living in a dictatorship. But how to be absolutely certain? It’s easy to tell if you are living under the yoke of an old-fashioned oppressive regime, especially if somebody from the Department of Health and Human Services hammers bamboo under your fingernails. But the modern type of dictator is a far subtler creature. He may not wear epaulettes or shrink human heads. Some of the foremost dictators currently in power have excellent taste in neckwear and are indistinguishable from merchant bankers. Some of them are merchant bankers, but that’s a horse of a different subject. The foremost tool used by modern dictators to subjugate their constituent populations is no longer violence, and this is what makes them so hard to identify. There is now a far more effective weapon in the dictator’s arsenal: futility.

Futility has made the jackboot obsolete. It operates on one of the greatest human vulnerabilities: our fear of humiliation. To understand this we must define some terms. First, futile and impossible are not the same things. An attempt to achieve the impossible will generally end in disaster, but it will not be humiliating–
because the odds of success are extremely low, so no penalty for failure and you get points just for trying. There is even a sort of romantic association with failure, as with tuberculosis in poets.

An excellent example of attempting the impossible is human flight. It was impossible for centuries, and legends grew up around those that failed in the attempt. The fellows that eventually figured the flying thing out pushed back the boundaries of impossibility, and made human flight a commonplace reality, except at Chicago’s O’Hare International terminal. So beyond the impossible is the possible. On the other side of the equation from impossibility, however, there’s futility.

Let’s put it another way, because I happen to have a spare analogy lying around. A young gink in 1922 decides to send a man to the moon. This is impossible in 1922. But Melvin (let’s say his name is Melvin) works the problem, and by the 1960′s there are men hopping around the moon like large bipedal pressure-suited fleas. So the impossible is where the action is, right? You follow me. Good. Now let’s have a look at futility. Same Melvin (he wears a yellow plaid waistcoat and a Rotary Club watch fob, incidentally) decides to send a man to the moon. But on a bicycle. This is futile. You couldn’t make a bicycle tire that would last the distance, for one thing. Worst of all, the effort would end in humiliation. The test pilot pedals furiously and ends up no closer to the moon than Nyack, NY before he gets short-winded and has to lie down. Everyone involved in this junket is mocked, scorned, ridiculed, exposed to derision even, because there was never any real question how things would work out– whereas the impossible carries with it the tang of hope. Because you just never know. So what the up-to-date dictator needs to do is to obscure that faint whiff of hope, to make the impossible into the merely futile, and before you know it people are throwing around references to sheep, vis-à-vis the general population.

Not everybody is trying to bicycle to the moon, so how does futility operate on today’s dictator-subjugated peoples? Let us spin another moonbeam. Say you, an American citizen prone to whimsy, wanted to travel to Cuba. One might say (go ahead and say it, I’ll wait) that the opposite of “futile” is “practical”. Is it impossible to travel to Cuba? No. A stout set of water wings is all that’s required, and maybe some sandwiches if the wind is against you. But is it practical? Emphatically not. It’s an enormous pain in the ass. You’ll be opposed every step of the way, even if you’re on the short list of persons they’ll allow to go there, such as journalists. It may not be impossible, but it’s futile. How about voting for president? Not impossible at all. Some people do it a dozen times in the same evening. But ask most persons in this Great Nation if it’s worth the trouble, you will get an answer to the effect of “no”, or even “fuck off”.

But surely, a hypothetical detractor (of which I have many) might argue, a leader cannot be said to be a dictator, no matter how resolutely he ignores the will of the people in order to follow his own whims, if (the word “if” here is meant to be italicized, but I forgot to do it and it’s too late now), if (I say again for emphasis) the people are free to speak out against him, to vote him out of office, to protest in the streets, to elect representatives for the express purpose of opposing that leader? The worst one can say of such a leader is that he is of an authoritarian bent, or a peckerwood. He can’t really be a dictator, right? Enter futility, stage left.

Because if speaking out against him has absolutely no impact on policy, if the voting machines are sufficiently jiggered and his opponents sufficiently irresolute, if protests are ignored by politicians and news outlets alike, and if the elected representatives staunchly ignore the will of their constituents in favor of the leader’s aforementioned whims, then it is futile to bother with any of these things. Opposition is futile: you can do it until you’re blue in the state, but nothing will happen. It’s like boycotting Wal-Mart because it treats its employees badly: knock yourself out, but don’t expect the corporation to go socialist all of a sudden. In fact, people that make such a stand are labeled cranks and idealists, reality-based unwashed hippie losers. It’s humiliating. There’s a Wal-Mart right over there, just go buy a pack of batteries. Ahhh, that feeling of futility is gone. Now you’re normal again.

Reactionaries please note I have never patronized a Wal-Mart.

What I’m driving at here is that Americans are drowning in a sense of futility right now. They are humiliated. George W. Bush (just for example) crapped on their heads, so they elected Nancy Pelosi to lead the charge against him, and Pelosi kicked them in the testicles. Humiliating. Many folks, having read my occasional screeds documenting the death rattles of mankind, comment that rather than whining, we ought to be DOING something about the issues (by “we” they mean “me”, of course; they’re already making a difference with street theater featuring Uncle Sam mimes with papier-mâché tanks and wheelbarrows stuffed with fake dollar bills). May the religious entity of their choice bless them, may they never get that horrible ant-like feeling of futility, but lordy lord do I ever get it myself. It doesn’t mean I’m living in a dictatorship. Maybe I just have a low tolerance for being ignored by all-powerful megalomaniacs pissing my tax dollars away to expand the reach of their personal corporate empires. Maybe I’m hypersensitive to a bunch of subnormal bureaucrats deciding how much freedom is too much for my own good. Probably I am. But once that old feeling of futility sneaks up on me, it sure takes hold.

If it was impossible to oppose a fellow like George W. Bush (just for example) because he would send brownshirts to your house to cut off your ears and put food on your family, it would be a whole lot more fun. We could have secret meetings and run little hand-cranked printing presses day and night, distributing leaflets concealed inside baskets of luncheon rolls. Eventually someone would figure out a way to electrify his bunny slippers, and the next thing you know Biff Zapata is walking into the White House and it’s a whole new day. Many a dictator has succumbed to the impossible in this manner. But it’s not impossible to oppose Bush, only futile. I have been opposing him since he first started governing the country, way back in 2002. What has been the yield of my efforts? What have the steadfast and urgent efforts of all my fellow-travelers opposing this erstwhile tyrant amounted to? Hint: it’s a quantity in the mid- to low- zilch region, relative to the damage he has meanwhile done on the slightest caprice.

So two questions hang in the air, like goiters: first, are we living in a dictatorship? I know you saw through my cunning rhetorical subterfuges above and know that this is what I was driving at the whole time. And you probably know that my answer is “yes”, but that it’s a dictatorship empowered by futility rather than violence (the violence being restricted to people we’ve recently attacked, such as Afghanis, Iraqis, or black Southerners, plus a handful of suspects whisked away for torture, just to remind everybody else there are worse sensations than a feeling of futility). That said, the second question arises from the first: if this is a dictatorship, even of the subtlest kind, what does one do about it? It’s humiliating to go around being outwitted at every turn by a president so incompetent he couldn’t light a match if you held the blowtorch. I think the answer lies in the nature of the impossible.

We should probably be attempting impossible things. Our current incremental approach amounts to pitching pebbles in the tide. World events play up the sense of futility: are we really going to diddle around demanding improved fuel economy when the seas are already going to rise five meters? How high is that in feet, anyway? If we’re at Peak Oil already, is it really worthwhile attempting to stop these rotten oilmen fighting it out in faraway deserts? Can’t we just wait until the oil runs out? If the educational system is so broken it will take decades to fix, shouldn’t we just bustle our kids into private schools now, rather than hope they graduate from high school when they’re thirty? It all seems dreadfully futile, put in that kind of context. But let’s talk about the impossible: cars that run five trillion billion miles on a thimbleful of mint sauce! A protective snow globe built over the entire North Pole with “Merry Xmas” engraved on the genuine burl walnut base! A proportionally representative government with mandatory voting for all adults, universal healthcare, and a lifetime supply of Circus Peanuts for every citizen! The more impossible something is, the more worthwhile it seems. At least there’s no disgrace if it doesn’t quite pan out the way you intended. Come to think of it, that’s probably the main appeal these days of demanding the impeachment of George W. Bush: when the Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, it was futile. Now that the Democrats are in charge, it’s impossible.

Ben Tripp, author of Square in the Nuts, is a hack in many mediums. He may be reached at credel@earthlink.net.

Creative commons copyright 2007 by Ben Tripp

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/tripp08252007.html

A Hegemonic Hubris

More War on the Horizon

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

No pullout from Iraq while I’m president, declares George W. Bush.

On to Iran, declares Vice President Cheney.

Israel is a “peace-seeking state” that needs $30 billion of US taxpayers’ money for war, declares State Department official Nicholas Burns.

The Democratic Congress, if not fully behind the Iraqi war, at least no longer is in the way of it.

Nor are the Democrats in the way of the Bush regime’s build up for initiating war with Iran.

The Bush regime says it is going to designate part of Iran’s military — the Revolutionary Guards — a terrorist organization, whose bases and facilities Bush intends to bomb along with Iran’s nuclear energy sites. Three US aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran. B-2 Stealth bombers are being fitted to carry 30,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs to use against hardened sites. Politicized US generals assert that Iran is providing arms and aid to the Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. The media are feeding the US population the same propaganda about nonexistent Iranian weapons of mass destruction that they fed us about nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. A former CIA Middle East field officer, Robert Baer, has written in Time magazine that the Bush regime has decided to attack the Revolutionary Guards within the next 6 months. Remember the “cakewalk war”? Well, this time the neocons think that an attack on the Revolutionary Guards will free Iran from Islamic influence and cause Iranians to back the US against their own government.

Lies, unprovoked aggression, and delusional expectations — the same ingredients that produced the Iraq catastrophe — all over again. The entire Bush regime and both political parties are complicit, along with the media and US allies.

According to Baer, the Bush regime has given no consideration to whether Iran’s response to a US attack might be different than to welcome it as liberation. What if Iran really were to arm the Iraqi resistance and/or to sink our aircraft carriers? How can any government, even one as incompetent, delusional and unaccountable as the Bush regime, initiate war without any thought to the consequences?

The Bush regime’s planned war against Iran casts light on the large increase in military armaments that the US is supplying to Israel. With Iraq in chaos and civil war, an attack on Iran leaves as opposition to Israel only Syria and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel cannot finish off the Palestinians until Hezbollah is destroyed. An Israeli attack on Syria while the US attacks Iran would leave Hezbollah without supplies in the face of a new Israeli attack.

The agenda unfolding before our eyes may be the neoconservative/Israeli/Cheney plan to rid the Middle East of any check to Israeli territorial expansion.

Nicholas Burns said that the $30 billion in military aid was not conditional on any Israeli concessions or progress toward resolving the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel’s ghettoizing and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian West Bank proceeds apace.

Meanwhile in America, while more money is poured into more war, condemned bridges collapse killing Americans who trusted their government to provide safe infrastructure. Devastated residents of New Orleans remain unaided. Financial difficulties deepen for more Americans as falling home prices and jobs lost to offshoring push more Americans into desperate straits. The US dollar continues to fall as the government’s war debts build up abroad.

Except for the armaments industry, where is the gain to America in Bush’s wars? Before Bush invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had stamped out drug production. The US invasion has brought it back.

On August 22 Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that US troops are the “greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.” Tell that to the 650,000 dead Iraqis and the 4 million displaced Iraqis, and the tens of thousands of slaughtered Afghans, and the coming civilian deaths in Iran. Tell that to all the bombed civilians from Serbia to Africa who are blown to pieces in order that a US president can make a point. Bush goes far beyond George Orwell’s “Newspeak” in his novel, 1984, when Bush equates US hegemony with liberation.

America’s hegemonic hubris is a sickness. A country that tolerates a war criminal while he openly plans to attack yet another country is definitely not a light unto the world.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts08242007.html