Semites and anti-Semites, that is the question Joseph Massad, December 2004 There is much misunderstanding about the term "anti-Semitism" among Jews, Arabs, and European Christians. The term is bandied about as a description of attitudes deemed anti-Jewish, and on occasion anti-Arab, but much of its use is anachronistic and ahistorical. While Zionists and their supporters have been using the charge of anti-Semitism against any and all who oppose Israel and its policies, especially, although not exclusively, in the Arab World, Arabs have taken offense countering that they are "Semites" and therefore by definition cannot be "anti-Semitic". What are the merits of such arguments? Perhaps some history will help: The term "Semite" was invented by European philologists in the 18th century to distinguish languages from one another by grouping them into "families" descended from one "mother" tongue to which they are all related. In this context, languages came to be organised into "Indo-European" and "Semitic", etc. The philologists claimed that Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, etc., were "Semitic" languages, even though philologists could never find a parent Semitic language from which they all derived. In the 19th century and with the rise of European biological racism, those who hated Jews could no longer rely on religious difference to mark out post- Enlightenment Jews as objects of their hatred. As religion was no longer part of the argumentation that could be used in a "rational and scientific" Europe, a new basis for the hatred of Jews had to be found. This did not mean however that certain religious ideas could not be rationalised. They often were. In keeping with the Protestant Reformation's abduction of the Hebrew bible into its new religion and its positing of modern European Jews as direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews, post- Enlightenment haters of Jews began to identify Jews as "Semites" on account of their alleged ancestors having spoken Hebrew. In fact the ancient Hebrews spoke Aramaic, the language in which the Talmud was written, as well as parts of the bible. Based on this new philological taxonomy and its correlate racial classifications in the biological sciences, Jews were endowed with this linguistic category that was soon transformed into a racial category. Accordingly, haters of Jews began to identify themselves as "anti-Semites". Thus the object of hatred of European anti-Semitism has always been European Jews. The claims made by many nowadays that any manifestation of hatred against Jews in any geographic location on Earth and in any historical period is "anti-Semitism" smacks of a gross misunderstanding of the European history of anti- Semitism. While oppression of, discrimination against, and hatred of communities of Jews qua Jews are found in many periods of European history, the basis for this hatred is different from modern anti-Semitism, as its inspirational sources are not rational science and biology or Enlightenment philology, but religious and other political and economic considerations that scapegoated Jews. This may not be important for those who want only to produce a lachrymose history of European Jews, but it is crucial to the understanding of how the identities produced since the European Enlightenment are different from preceding periods, and that they function as new bases for nationalism, racism, oppression, discrimination, and liberation, and for the modern mechanisms put in place to institutionalise such identities and categories of humans. The defensive claim made by some that Arabs cannot be "anti-Semitic" because they are "Semites" is equally erroneous and facile. First, I should state that I do not believe that anyone is a "Semite" any more than I believe anyone is an "Aryan", and I do not believe that Arabs or Jews should proudly declare that they are "Semites" because European racists classified them as such. But if the history of European Christian anti-Semitism is mostly a history targeting Jews as objects of discrimination and exclusion, the history of European Orientalism and colonialism is the one that targeted Arabs and Muslims, among many others. This does not mean that Arabs are not considered Semites by European racialist and philological classifications; they indeed are. Nor does this mean that much of the hatred of Arabs today is not derived from a prior anti- Semitism that targeted Jews. Indeed it is. The history of European Orientalism is one that is fully complicit with anti-Semitism from which it derives many of its representations of ancient and modern Arabs and of ancient Hebrews and modern Jews. As Edward Said demonstrated a quarter of a century ago in his classic Orientalism, "what has not been sufficiently stressed in histories of modern anti-Semitism has been the legitimation of such atavistic designations by Orientalism, and... the way this academic and intellectual legitimation has persisted right through the modern age in discussions of Islam, the Arabs, or the Near Orient." Said added: "The transference of popular anti-Semitic animus from a Jewish to an Arab target was made smoothly, since the figure was essentially the same." In the context of the 1973 War, Said commented that Arabs came to be represented in the West as having "clearly 'Semitic' features: sharply hooked noses, the evil moustachioed leer on their faces, were obvious reminders (to a largely non- Semitic population) that 'Semites' were at the bottom of all 'our' troubles." This is important, as many people in the Arab world and outside it think that European Jews are the ones who called themselves "Semites", rather than European Christian racists who invented the term. Of course this misunderstanding is understandable given the fact that Zionism, which adopted wholesale anti-Semitic ideologies, would also call Jews "Semites" and would begin to consider Jews as Semites racially from the late 19th century to the present. In this sense not only do many Arabs think that "Semites" is a Jewish-invented category but so do many European Jews who were (and in some contexts remain) victims of this anti-Jewish designation. But this is different from the spurious claim that "Arabs cannot be anti-Semitic because they are Semites." There are Arabs today who are anti- Jewish, and they borrow their anti-Jewish rhetoric not from the Palestine experience but from European rhetorics of anti-Semitism. The point is that Arab Christians and Muslims can be anti-Jewish just as Jews can be, and American and Israeli Jews often are, anti-Arab racists, even though many among these Jews and Arabs use the category "Semite" for self-classification. Indeed a large and disproportionate number of the purveyors of anti- Arab racism in today's United States and Israel as well as in Western Europe are Jews. But there is also a disproportionate number of Jews among those who defend Arabs and Muslims against Euro- American and Israeli racism and anti-Semitism. The majority, however, of those who hate Arabs and Muslims in the West remain European and American Christians. It is often pointed out by Zionists and their supporters that holocaust denial in the Arab world is the major evidence for "Arab anti-Semitism". I have written elsewhere how any Arab or Palestinian who denies the Jewish holocaust falls into the Zionist logic. While holocaust denial in the West is indeed one of the strongest manifestations of anti-Semitism, most Arabs who deny the holocaust deny it for political not racist reasons. This point is even conceded by the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim Orientalist Bernard Lewis. Their denial is based on the false Zionist claim that the holocaust justifies Zionist colonialism. The Zionist claim is as follows: Since Jews were the victims of the holocaust, then they have the right to colonise Palestine and establish a Jewish colonial-settler state there. Those Arabs who deny the holocaust accept the Zionist logic as correct. Since these deniers reject the right of Zionists to colonise Palestine, the only argument left to them is to deny that the holocaust ever took place, which, to their thinking, robs Zionism of its allegedly "moral" argument. But the fact that Jews were massacred does not give Zionists the right to steal someone else's homeland and to massacre the Palestinian people. The oppression of a people does not endow it with rights to oppress others. If those Arab deniers refuse to accept the criminal Zionist logic that justifies the murder and oppression of the Palestinians by appealing to the holocaust, then these deniers would no longer need to make such spurious arguments. All those in the Arab world who deny the Jewish holocaust are in my opinion Zionists. Anyone who believes in social justice and opposes racist oppression must be in solidarity with all holocaust victims, especially European Jews, 90 per cent of whom were exterminated by a criminal and genocidal regime. Such a person must equally be against the Zionist abduction of the holocaust to justify Israel's colonial and racist policies. The attempt by holocaust deniers to play down the number of holocaust victims is obscene, as whether one million or 10 million Jews were killed, the result is still genocide and this would never justify Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. Such obscene number games on the part of holocaust deniers are hardly different from Zionist Jewish denial of the Palestinian nakba and are also similar to the continued Zionist attempts to play down the number of Palestinian refugees. While the nakba and the holocaust are not equivalent in any sense, the logic of denying them is indeed the same. I should stress here that the Palestine Liberation Organisation and most Palestinian intellectuals have spoken and written since the 1960s of their solidarity with Jewish holocaust victims and have attacked those who deny it took place. Unlike the official and unofficial Israeli denial of the expulsion of the Palestinians and the numbers of the refugees, those who deny the holocaust among Palestinians have no position whatsoever inside the PLO nor any legitimacy among the Palestinian intelligentsia. Today we live in a world where anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred, derived from anti-Semitism, is everywhere in evidence. It is not Jews who are being murdered by the thousands by Arab anti- Semitism, but rather Arabs and Muslims who are being murdered by the tens of thousands by Euro- American Christian anti-Semitism and by Israeli Jewish anti-Semitism. If anti-Semites posited Jews as the purveyors of corruption, as financier bankers who control the world, as violent communist subversives, and as poisoners of Christian wells, the Arab and the Muslim today are seen as in control of the oil market and therefore of the global financial market, the purveyors of hatred and corruption of civilised Christian and Jewish societies, as violent terrorists, and as possible mass murderers, not with some Semitic Jewish poison but with Semitic Arab nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons (which are nowhere to be found). Thus Michael Moore feels vindicated in telling us in his recent film, Fahrenheit 9/11, about the portion of the American economy controlled by Saudi money while neglecting to mention the much, much larger American share of the Saudi economy. Anti- Semitism is alive and well today worldwide and its major victims are Arabs and Muslims and no longer Jews. The fight should indeed be against all anti-Semitism no matter who the object of its oppression is, Arab or Jew. Joseph Massad is an Assistant Professor of Modern Arabic Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University Courtesy of AlAhram Weekly
List of U.S. foreign interventions since 1945
1940s - Occupation and rebuilding of Japan 1945-1952 after World War II, drafting Japan's current democratic constitution. (see Occupied Japan)
- 1945, USSR occupies North Korea and US occupies South Korea. USSR denies elections in North Korea, establishing communist government; US allows UN supervised elections.
- Occupation and rebuilding of West Germany after World War II. Merged US occupation zone with the French and British zones to form the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.
- March 12, 1947 President Harry Truman proclaimed the Truman Doctrine, stating that the United States would support "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The US gave $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece to battle Communist insurgents in Greece in 1947 and prevent both countries from falling under the Soviet sphere of influence. (See Greek Civil War)
- Central Intelligence Agency involvement in Italian elections, involving propaganda and the alleged buying of votes, in order to prevent the Communist Party of Italy coming to power, in 1948. (See 1948 Italian election)
- 1948-1951 the United States contributed both economic and technical assistance toward the recovery of European countries after World War II, known as the Marshall Plan. Sixteen countries accept the aid, but most communist countries reject it.
- June 28 1948, the US flew supplies into the Western-held sectors of Berlin over the blockade during 1948-1949, known as the Berlin Airlift
- U.S. financial and military support of the Republic of China, that began during the Sino-Japanese War and through World War II, continued against the People's Liberation Army.
1950s- Funding of French Indochina War from 1945 until 1954.
- Korean War from 1950 until 1953: After communist North Koreans invade South Korea, the UN, with every nation voting "yea" except for Yugoslavia that abstained, approves military support for South Korea, involving over a dozen countries including the US.
- U.S. (CIA) and UK (MI-6) succeed in removal of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran (Operation Ajax) - 1953.http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html
- Food for Peace is established in 1954. Since the program started, it has sent over 100 million metric tons of American food to 150 countries, or about 3 billion people. This program with other US programs account for 60% of the world's total food aid.
- CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala (Operation PBSUCCESS) - 1954.
- U.S. support for President Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam from 1955 - 1963. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/
- Lebanon crisis of 1958: The US assisted President Camille Chamoun when Pan-Arbists advocated by Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, attempted to overthrow the Lebanese government.
- After the Chinese bombing of ancient monasteries at Chatreng and Litang that housed thousands of civilans in 1956 which violated the Plan for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, the CIA aided Chushi Gandrug and Tensung Dhanglang Magar's resistance movement.
- U.S. support for Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista (amongst others against Marxist insurgents) until his unpopularity and impending overthrow becomes clear in 1959.
- Two assasination attempts of general Abdul Karim Qassim, president of Iraq, 1959 and 1963 (the second one succeeded.
1960s- Peace Corps, an independent U.S. federal agency, was established in 1961. Within six years, Peace Corp was involved in education and agriculture related projects of 55 Third World countries. Over the years, the Peace Corps has expanded its mission to include improving education, health and HIV/AIDS, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment in about 80 developing and underdeveloped countries and nations with a developing economy.
- U.S.-backed abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961.
- CIA planning to assassinate Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and alleged involvement in his death. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/lum-j10.shtml http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/carl-m15.shtml Belgium has since officially apologized for its own role in the affair. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1805546.stm
- CIA involvement in the assassination of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, their former ally in the Dominican Republic, in 1961 http://history-matters.com/archive/church/reports/ir/contents.htm http://history-matters.com/archive/church/reports/ir/pdf/ChurchIR_3D_Trujillo.pdf
- Alleged CIA involvement in overthrow of Juan Bosch, the democratically elected leader of the Dominican Republic. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=dominican_republic
- Alleged CIA-backed overthrow of José María Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador in 1963.
- U.S. backs coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm
- CIA-backed overthrow of João Goulart in Brazil in 1964. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB118/index.htm http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=brazil
- CIA covert support for the election of Eduardo Frei Montalva of Chile in 1964.
- Alleged CIA-backed overthrow of Sukarno and subsequent support of Suharto in Indonesia in 1965. Former officials of the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia acknowledge supplying a list of 5,000 suspected communists -- given to them by the CIA -- to the Indonesian government and checking them off the list when those people were executed. The U.S. government also supplied 90% of Indonesia's military hardware.http://www.namebase.org/kadane.htmlhttp://www.namebase.org/scott.html
- Vietnam War - (1964–1975)
- Funding for the conservative, pro-Western Botswana Democratic Party
- Involvement in riots and violence that brought down the government of Cheddi Jagan in Guyana.
- Alleged CIA-backed military coup brings dictator Joseph Mobutu to power in the Congo in 1965.
- Alleged CIA support to military coup against Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.
- Alleged CIA-backed military coup ushers in Regime of the Colonels in Greece in 1967.
- American support for Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
- CIA-organized military operation ends in execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967.
- CIA involvement in the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico, 1968
- Beginning in 1968 the US bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and Cambodia to disrupt the logistical support given to the Viet Cong by the North Vietnamese Army
1970s1980s- Alleged support for Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, 1980's.
- CIA support for José Napoleón Duarte and other anti-Communist politicians alleged to have links with right-wing death squads.
- Provision of military assistance to Hissène Habré of Chad, leading to the overthrow of Libya-supported neutralist Goukouni Oueddei.
- Sale of small arms and weapons production materials to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War
- Sale of arms to Iran (see Iran–Contra Affair)
- Training of Nicaraguan Contras and support to military regimes in Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, and South America during the 1980s.
- Alleged CIA support to Gwangju Massacre in 1980.
- Alleged CIA and South African backing to a coup attempt in the Seychelles in 1981.
- American support for Israel in the 1982 Lebanon War.
- Support for military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala Alleged CIA support for the coup that brought him into power.
- Invasion of Grenada, overthrow of Marxist government (Operation Urgent Fury) - 1983.
- Under CIA Director George H W Bush, provided funds, training and weapons (mainly Stinger missiles to thward Soviet air superiority - they were the real reason why the mujahadeen won the war)with help of other organisations (most of them are now 'terrorist' organisations) and the Pakistani ISI (secret services)
- Alleged involvement in the mysterious death of Samora Machel, President of Mozambique (1986).
- Support to coup against Timoci Bavadra, democratically elected Prime Minister of Fiji in 1987.
- In 1989, The US establishes Support for East European Democracy to help assist Poland and Hungary's transition into market-based democracies.
- Operation Just Cause: In late 1989, the US invaded Panama and arrested Manuel Noriega for drug trafficking after a U.S. Marine was killed and Noriega declared war against the US.
1990s- Beginning in December 1989 until 1996 when the Liberian civil war ended, the United States attempted to get UN involved in negotations. The UN refused. Meanwhile, the US provided humanitarian aid, including food and developmental aid.
- Intervention in Colombian civil war, 1990's
- Corruption of elections in Bulgaria in 1990 and in Albania in 1991 http://members.aol.com/bblum6/bulgaria.htm.
- Funding to the opposition presidential candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, in Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua. Chamorro won the election.
- After Iraq invades Kuwait in 1990, King Fahd, fearing Saudi Arabia would be Saddam Hussein's next target, invites U.S. troops to use the country as a base.
- UN-led Gulf War following Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, 1991
- When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program helped evacuate 75,000 people and $250 million to $375 million worth of equipment.
- Alleged U.S. Support for ousting Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti, 1991 http://members.aol.com/bblum6/haiti2.htm.
- U.S.-led UN sanctions against Iraq, from 1990 to 2003.
- The FREEDOM Support Act in 1992 amends Support for East European Democracy to include the new independent states of the former Soviet Union to aid their transition into market-based democracies.
- Operation Provide Relief, a 1992 US lead humanitarian relief for Somalia. After looting of the aid, it was reorganized as Operation Restore Hope, an American military operation with the support of the United Nations to deliver humanitarian aid and restore order to Somalia, that eventually lead to the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993.
- U.S. removal of Raoul Cedras from office in Haiti and temporary occupation of the country, 1993.
- Alleged support for Mexico in fighting the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, 1994.
- NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs, 1995.
- Responsing to the 1995 flood in North Korea that caused a famine, the US initially provided over $8 million in general humanitarian (China was the only country to initially contribute more aid). However, eight years later, the US has provided $644 million in aid to the country which comprises nearly 50% of the aid going to North Korea.
- U.S.-led bombing campaign, called Operation Desert Fox, against Iraq in enforcement of the UN designated No-Fly zones created to protect Kurds and Marsh Arabs, 1998.
- Operation Infinite Reach: a US cruise missile strike on terrorist bases and targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, including the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, after al Qaeda bombed two US ebassies in 1998.
- NATO's bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo Conflict. Officially aimed at preventing ethnic cleansing of Albanians, 1999. During this bombing the Chinese embassy was hit. Some say this was done deliberately http://www.fair.org/activism/embassy-bombing.html.
2000s Beyond these interventions, the United States has developed a great deal of economic influence over many developing states. Some claim that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have assisted American foreign policy in this area. (If correct, this would also require the implicit co-operation of other countries, as the US has only 18% of the IMF's voting rights. http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.htm) External links
Israeli Extremists and Christian Fundamentalists: The Alliance
This article was adapted by author Grace Halsell from her speech at the North American Regional Non-Governmental Symposium on the Question of Palestine held in June 1988 at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
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Grace Halsell, June 1988 At the time I began my research for my book Prophecy and Politics, I discovered the average American I met in Washington, DC, and New York was not interested in TV evangelists and their link to Israel. Neither were book editors. I went to 25 top editors in New York with my book idea on religion and politics. Michael Korda of Simon and Schuster was typical. "Jerry Falwell? Pat Robertson? Who is interested in those crazies?" By the time my book came out those "crazies" were on the front page of every American newspaper and on every news channel. Of course, I didn't give them this instant fame, which extended throughout the world. Two of them earned it themselves by being in the middle of scandals. The press told us that Jim Baker had committed adultery and that Jimmy Swaggart regularly visited a prostitute. A fellow marine said Pat Robertson never had to dodge bullets in Korea because he had used his father's influence as a senator to escape front line duty. But almost everyone ignored the biggest scandal of all: the peculiar mixture of prophecy and politics professed by these and other Christian Zionists. The Christian Zionists Message What is the message of the Christian Zionist? Simply stated it is this: Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us. "Never mind what Israel does," say the Christian Zionists. "God wants this to happen." This includes the invasion of Lebanon, which killed or injured an estimated 100,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians; the bombing of sovereign nations such as Iraq; the deliberate, methodical brutalizing of the Palestinians—breaking bones, shooting children, and demolishing homes; and the expulsion of Palestinian Christians and Muslims from a land they have occupied for over 2,000 years. My premise in Prophecy and Politics is that Christian Zionism is a dangerous and growing segment of Christianity, which was popularized by the 19th-century American Cyrus Scofield when he wrote into a Bible his interpretation of events in history. These events all centered around Israel—past, present, and future. His Scofield Bible is today the most popular of the reference Bibles. Scofield said that Christ cannot return to earth until certain events occur: The Jews must return to Palestine, gain control of Jerusalem and rebuild a temple, and then we all must engage in the final, great battle called Armageddon. Estimates vary, but most students of Armageddon theology agree that as a result of these relatively recent interpretations of Biblical scripture, 10 to 40 million Americans believe Palestine is God's chosen land for the Jews. 
Has the power of the Christian Zionists diminished? I do not think so. Rather, we are seeing how the Christian Zionists, motivated by religious beliefs, are working hand in glove with politically motivated, militant Jewish Zionists around the world. It is the Christian support of Zionism that emboldens Zionists to believe they can dictate to relatively weak and dependent countries such as Austria, whom they may choose as their president. It is the Christian support of Zionism that allows Manuel Noriega to remain the strongman in Panama, misusing his power, regardless of what harm he causes to the United States, his neighbors, and his people. It is the Christian support of Zionism that enables the militant Israelis to take over Palestinian homes surrounding the Al-Aqsa mosque in pursuit of their well-documented plan to destroy Jerusalem's most holy Islamic site, sacred to a billion Muslims around the world—one-fifth of humanity. Christian Zionists and the Iran-Contra Scandal Remarkably,it was this Christian cult of Israel that brought us the Iran contra scandal, perhaps the most self-destructive act in the history of the United States. Marine Col. Oliver North, the perpetrator of this misguided series of actions, is a Christian Zionist. A born-again charismatic figure, he endeared himself to the militant Israeli Zionists who plotted Iran-contra. "He is more Israeli," said one Jewish general, "than we Israelis." This is often the case. In his zealotry, the Christian Zionist can become more Zionist, more militant, than the Jewish Zionist. In the Iran-contra hearings, Sen. James McClure (R-ID) explained to North that the US had a stated policy of neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war. That policy differed radically from Israel's policy of selling arms to Iran. Yes, agreed North, the two policies were not the same. The question, to which McClure's efforts yielded no response, then becomes: Why would the US forego its American policy to pursue Israeli policy? The answer, unfortunately, lies in the belief system of Christian Zionists: They believe that what Israel wants is what God wants. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to give the green light to whatever it is Israel wants and then conceal this from the American people. Anything, including lies, theft, even murder, is justified as long as Israel wants it. Another perfect example of a Christian Zionist is Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI). Throughout the hearings on the Iran-contra scandal, the Hawaiian kept the focus on the contras and steered determinedly clear of any criticism of Israel. If, in answer to questions, witnesses sought to explain the seminal and continuing role of Israel, Inouye abruptly broke off the line of questioning that had led the hearings to this unwanted destination. Despite the political problems created by its lay practitioners and the scandals that rocked some of its TV ministries, this belief system—this cult of Israel—has not been diminished. Indeed, I hold that Christian Zionism threatens not just the lives of Palestinians and other Arabs, but the very existence of the United States. Because of the cult of Israel, we have become a nation that does not have its own Middle East policy, but the policy the government of Israel tells us to have. Despite the terrifying aspects of the alliance of militant Christians with militant Jewish Zionists, I find some encouraging developments. In my visits to colleges, clubs, and churches around the country, I have found strong support for the message and warning in Prophecy and Politics. It has come not only from liberal congregations, but from across the whole spectrum of Christianity, including those Christians who call themselves fundamentalists. These supporters see Christ as the bearer to humanity of God's message of peace, brotherhood, love, and reconciliation. These Christians do not endorse either the cult of Israel or its killIngs and beatings of Palestinians. I have found many such Christians in my frequent visits to my home state of Texas. There and all over this slowly-awakening land of ours, I have found a small but increasing number of ministers and lay people who are deeply alarmed by the cult of Israel and willing to stand up and speak out about it. Grace Halsell is the author of Prophecy and Politics. The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the US Christian Right.
              
Flashback Feature: US elections 2004 |
Iraqis Say: 'US Out Now!'
By Juan Cole, April 30, 2004
From March 22 to April 2, 60 trained Iraqi pollsters interviewed 3,444 randomly selected Iraqis for USA Today. This is one of the first polls in Iraq that seems to me well weighted statistically, though to be sure we'd have to know more than USA Today told us.
The numbers are negative for the US, and are much more negative than previous such polls. Moreover, the polling ended by April 2, just before the Shiite uprising and the worst of the Fallujah fighting, so that it is highly likely that the present attitudes of the Iraqi public toward the US are much more negative.
Amazingly, 57% of Iraqis say that US troops should leave Iraq immediately. If one subtracted the Kurds, a much higher percentage of Arabic speaking Iraqis say this. And, they say it with their eyes open. About 57% also admit that life would get harder (i.e. there would be a lot of instability) if the US suddenly withdrew. They want the US gone anyway, and will take their chances.
Over half say there are circumstances under which it is all right to attack US troops! A February poll I discussed here had said that only 10% of Iraqi Shiites held that attacks on US troops were ever justified, and 30% of Sunni Arabs felt that way. The number in al-Anbar province (think Fallujah) was 70%, but it was high for Iraq at that time. Again, if the earlier polling was correct, there was a massive shift in opinion on this matter. We went from having about 3 million Iraqis think it was all right to attack US troops to more than 13 million.
[My earlier comment on the Feb. poll: "That is, the poll actually shows that in absolute numbers, there are more Shiites who approve of attacks on Americans than there are Sunni Arabs. The numbers bring into question the official line that there are no problems in the South, only in the Sunni Arab heartland. The other problem is that attitudes change, and sometimes they change rapidly. The US cannot count on the percentage of Shiites who approve of attacks on its troops remaining at 10% if it is strafing Sadr City in Baghdad. Every 1% increase in the number of Shiites who approve of attacks equals 160,000 new enemies.").
For the question, "Has the Coalition invasion of Iraq done more harm than good?", in the USA Today poll 46% say "more harm," whereas only 33% say "more good." But the ethnic breakdown here is startling. Only 2% of Kurds say the invasion did more harm. 56% of Sunni Arabs say it did more harm, and so do 59% of Baghdadis (Baghdad is about 2/5s Shiite but the Shiites there are probably Sadrists in the majority, who agree with most Sunnis about the undesirability of the US presence). Among Shiites, 47% say it did more harm, 28% say it did more good.
More harm: Total 45%, Baghdad 59%, Shiite 47%, Sunni Arab 56%, Kurds 2%
More good: Total 33%
About the Same: Total 16%
To the question of whether coalition military forces are mainly liberators or mainly occupiers, 71% said occupiers. The percentage among Arabs, both Sunni and Shiite, who said this, was about 80%. The Kurds mostly disagreed, which brought the numbers down. (The US never put that many troops in the Kurdish north, depending on the peshmerga fighters, so the Kurds are in fact much less occupied than the Arabs).
An opinion poll done by an Iraqi institute a couple of months ago found that about 47% of Iraqis said that the US invasion was a source of humiliation, and 48% said it was a liberation. If that poll was valid, it means that there was a massive shift in opinion by late March and a big growth in anti-Americanism. Based on my close reading of the Iraqi press and reports of sermons, I believe that the Israeli murder of Hamas clerical leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on March 22 was the turning point in the big spike in anti-American feeling. There were lots of demonstrations that the Western press did not cover, and a lot of oratory.
Regarding George Bush, 55% of Iraqis have an unfavorable view of him, and if we exclude the 4 million Kurds and just look at the Arabs, his unfavorable rating is above 60% for both Sunnis and Shiites. Since Iraq is now for all practical purposes the 51st state, I say we let the Iraqis vote in the US elections in November.
Oddly, 61% of Iraqis still say that the US invasion and overthrow of Saddam was worth it (though only 28% of Sunni Arabs say it was worth it). That is, the poll does not show that Iraqis have begun regretting the US overthrow of Sadam. It shows that they have begun regretting the continued US Occupation.
And, the bad news is that despite the ballyhooed transfer of sovereignty on June 30, the actual US occupation is likely to last for a decade unless Iraqis throw the US out. And given their present mood, one should not dismiss the possibility that that is what they will do.
Source: Juan Cole
FOX markets to Bigots and Racists
By Ahmed Amr, November 1, 2000
FOXNEWS.com, which is owned by FOX, has become a haven for every hate group in the United States. As I write this, I gaze to the left side of my Screen and I am assaulted by the cyber equivalent of neon signs designed to attract every lunatic bigot and racist. What follows are some of the titles in the Middle East folder. SANDN1GGERZ? THE END OF ISRAEL? ISLAMIC CHILD ABUSE? ISLAM'S WORSHIP OF THE MOON GOD? SHOCKING FACTS ABOUT PALESTINIANS? PALESTINIAN ANIMALS INSTIGATE GUNBATTLE? LET THE BOMBING BEGIN? PLO OFFERS CASH FOR KIDS? SHAME ON MUSLIMS? PALESTINIANS LIE ABOUT ATTACKS? PALESTINIAN CALLS TO KILL CHRISTIANS? I begin to wonder why 25% of the titles are so overtly racist and demeaning. When you delve into the content, you get an instant answer. A stream of racist 'cyber' graffiti assaults you.
I go on and look at how many postings are overtly religious, not counting the ones listed above. BIBLICAL REFERENCES TO JERUSALEM? THE TALMUD? THE PROHET EZEKIEL AND WAR? WHAT JESUS ACTUALLY SAID TO ALL OF US? KINGDOM OF GOD AND JOHN THE BAPTIST? TRIBALISM?
That is over a third of the titles. And that is after FOX did a major cleanup over the last ten days.
I went out to FOXNEWS.com expecting to find a forum for a fair exchange of ideas on the Middle East. And then I moved on to other parts of the FOX website and found more disturbing titles. All designed to appeal to the racist fringe. Even the tamer titles have a 'KKK rally on Sunday' feel about them.
Is FOX deliberately marketing to the hate mongers? The proof is in the 'cyber' pudding. The word is out about FOX being a free and open forum for bigots and racists. Even the tamest titles contain content that is abusive and offensive against Arabs, Palestinians, Jews, Christians, African-Americans and Muslims. Again, this is after a major cleanup effort. It is obviously a favored destination of racists, bigots and Nazis all over America and the free world. There is only one way to explain how bigots came to dominate this major media website. Market segmentation. FOX management has apparently decided that bigots and race mongers are a legitimate market niche. Indeed, FOX's website has become a tug of war between the lunatic right-wing racist fringe and those who are watching them.
On the postings related to the Middle East, it is notable that many Israelis and Israel firsters have found an open platform to defame the Palestinians. There are also disturbing comments from Arabs and Palestinians. But I will grant this to the later group, enough of them have made their argument without resort to demonizing Jews and Israelis.
There are things that can and should be done about this situation. I and many others have made FOX aware that it is being monitored. Indeed, the FOX website is a bit less offensive than it was a few week ago. But what lingers is the suspicion that the next posting you read is going to be a bit of racist graffiti. Too often it is.
As an international media company, one would think that FOX is worried about its reputation. This website is advertised on many of the FOX programs. FOX encourages its cable customers to come and participate in this forum. They come. They see. They wander off to sites with more decent content. Leaving the bigots and the few who take enough offense to stay and notice and monitor.
I am still lost as to why FOX would allow itself to be considered a HATE.com kind of site. If it was market segmentation, I suspect they will come to regret the decision. As for their reputation, it will be forever soiled by those who have been assaulted by the hate on this site.
I personally will welcome the day when FOX comes to the conclusion that this is a serious problem and deal with it in a responsible and civic like manner. But, in the meantime, let those of us who have taken note, take on FOX.
Ahmed Amr is the editor of NileMedia.com.
Salesmen of Death
John Pilger
May 27, 2002
WITH nuclear powers India and Pakistan on the edge of war, the role of the Blair government in fuelling the conflict has been critical. In the year 2000, the Government approved nearly 700 export licences for weapons and military equipment to both countries. These had a total value of £64million. India, which gets the great majority of British weapons, is building under licence Jaguar bombers that are capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
In January, as the two countries prepared for war, Tony Blair arrived in the subcontinent on what was called a "peace mission." In fact, as the Indian press revealed, he discussed the opposite of peace - a £1billion deal to sell India 60 Hawk fighter-bombers made by British Aerospace. "The issue of India acquiring the Hawks," reported the periodical Outlook India, "was raised by Prime Minister Blair with Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, defence minister George Fernandes said today."
Three weeks later, the British High Commission in New Delhi threw a party for a group of British arms salesmen in town for a major weapons fair called Defexpo, whose organisers made no secret of their aim to exploit the "recent developments taking place in the south-east Asia region" - in other words, the conflicts in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
So keen has the Blair government been to exploit this opportunity of war that a British official has the full-time assignment, in New Delhi, of "defence supply". He works with the Defence Export Sales Organisation (DESO) in London, an arm of the Ministry of Defence, whose sole aim is to sell weapons to foreign armies. A secret list of 22 "highly valuable priority markets" targeted for British arms sales has India and Pakistan near the top. British missiles, tanks, artillery, howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, small arms and ammunition are all available on buy-now-pay-later terms.
But the prize is the 60 Hawk fighter-bombers, coyly described as "trainers". Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt was yesterday reported to have "banned" this deal. It has not been banned; the delivery date has been simply put back - which was the tactic the Blair government used in delaying the shipment of Hawks to Indonesia when the dictatorship in that country was attempting to annihilate East Timor.
INDIA and Pakistan have millions of impoverished people without basic services. According to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, the price of one Hawk bomber is roughly the amount needed to provide 1.5million people with fresh water for life.
Arming both sides is, of course, as British as pith helmets. In the horrendous war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, Britain did just that in company with other Western countries. At least a million people were killed.
The usual hypocrisy and double standards are even more spectacular under this government. Soon after New Labour came to power in 1997, the then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced an "ethical dimension" to foreign policy. He said that the Government "will not issue an (arms) export licence if there is a clearly identifiable risk that the intended recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country" or if there was a threat to "regional stability".
He might have been talking about India and Pakistan, whose long- running dispute over Kashmir is, according to Cook's successor Jack Straw, "potentially more dangerous than the crisis in the Middle East".
From the day it took office, veiled by Cook's "ethical" nonsense, New Labour embraced the arms business. In his first few months as Prime Minister, Blair approved 11 arms deals with General Suharto's genocidal regime in Indonesia under cover of the Official Secrets Act.
He has since maintained this country as the world's third biggest arms trader, selling more lethal weapons in New Labour's first year than the Tories. More than two-thirds of sales are to governments with appalling human rights records. Britain's biggest customer is Saudi Arabia, the most extreme Islamic regime on earth, where apostates are beheaded. Women have no rights; it is illegal for a woman even to drive a car.
CHERIE Blair, who with Laura Bush, wife of the American President, denounced the "brutal oppression of women" in Afghanistan by the Taliban and demanded their emancipation, has remained silent on the medieval treatment of Saudi women in the spiritual home of al-Qaeda. Saudi Arabia has most of the world's oil.
The results of an investigation by the National Audit Office into the £20billion Al Yamamah (The Dove) deal between the Saudi princes and the British arms industry, believed to be the biggest in history, were suppressed first by the Tories and, since 1997, by Labour. The reason is that the report almost certainly describes "commissions" paid on the sale of Tornado fighters - £15million on one aircraft is said to have been the going rate.
Under Blair, taking his lead from Margaret Thatcher's obsession with the arms industry, sales of weapons and military equipment have become the most heavily subsidised sector of the UK economy apart from agriculture. This means that taxpayers underwrite loans-for-arms to dictators oppressing their people. The argument that the Government is "protecting jobs" is demolished by the writing-off of billions of pounds, which could create jobs in peace-time industries.
This was how Hawk fighter-bombers were "sold" to the Suharto dictatorship. One of the first things Robin Cook did when New Labour came to power was to fly out to Indonesia and shake the mass murderer's hand. Indonesia was then crushing the life out of East Timor, using British Aerospace's finest products: Hawk aircraft and Heckler and Koch machine guns.
For two years, with the help of lobby journalists "briefed" by lying Foreign Office officials, Cook was able to deny that the Hawks were being used in East Timor - until the Indonesians grew tired of the subterfuge and made a fool of him by sending Hawks in menacing passes over Dili, the East Timorese capital.
The making and selling of arms is crucial to the post-September 11 "war on terrorism", which is not a war on terrorism at all but a justification for the US to consolidate and extend its global supremacy. Indeed, most Anglo- American weapons go to client regimes that promote terrorism; Saudi Arabia, home of most of the September 11 hijackers and tutors of the Taliban, is the prime example.
Arms sales and the development of multi-billion dollar warplanes, ships and missile systems, have an essential place in the "global economy". They invariably lead to an American economic "boom" or "recovery" which influences the economies of Europe and much of the world.
In 1960, President Eisenhower called American capitalism a "military- industrial complex" powered by arms and other military-related contracts. Forty cents in every dollar ends up with the Pentagon which, in the financial year 2001/2, will spend a record $400billion on its war machine. Not surprisingly, war ensures the industry's prosperity. Following the Gulf War and the Nato attack on Yugoslavia, both American and British arms sales leapt. When the New York Stock Exchange re-opened after September 11, the stocks of arms companies were almost alone in showing an increase in value. Raytheon, the missile maker and contributor to New Labour, was one of them.
TONY Blair's close links with Israel - many of them forged by his friend, the deal-maker Michael Levy, whom he made Lord Levy - are described as "the Government's tireless efforts to bring peace and stability to the Middle East." The opposite is true.
As on the Indian sub-continent, British arms policy has actually fanned the flames in a region in deepest crisis. In the first 14 months of the Palestinian uprising against Israel's illegal military occupation - when the Palestinians' main weapon was the slingshot - the Blair government approved 230 export licences to Israel for arms and military equipment. The licence categories these covered included large-calibre weapons, ammunition, bombs and almost certainly vital parts for American-supplied helicopter gunships. These Apache gunships have been frequently on the news, firing missiles at civilian areas.
While British weapons and parts were being shipped to the Israeli military machine, Amnesty International investigators reported "human rights violations and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions which, over the past 18 months, have been committed daily, hourly, even every minute by the Israeli authorities against Palestinians".
Foreign Office mouthpieces, also known as junior ministers, routinely tell Parliament that they have "an assurance that British equipment will not be used in the Occupied Territories". This is clearly false. As reporters witnessed recently, Israeli armoured personnel carriers have a chassis made from British-supplied Centurion tanks.
Business is business, and it never stops. On September 11, at an arms fair in London's Docklands, there was not even a respectful silence in honour of the victims of the Twin Towers. The Israelis had a whole pavilion; one Israeli company, Rafael, was here to sell the Ministry of Defence the Gill-Spike Anti-tank missile, a weapon distinguished by its history of use against civilians in Palestine and Lebanon.
At last year's Labour Party conference Blair, playing the Christian imperialist, promised "the most positive involvement" in Africa that would attack poverty and under-development and heal "a scar on the conscience of the world".
One of the main causes of poverty in Africa is the amount spent on arms by regimes offered a variety of enticements by Western business and governments.
Three months after the Prime Minister's heartfelt words, the value of British arms sales to Africa was revealed to be a record - four times that of the previous year. It was also disclosed that Blair had given his personal backing to the sale of a British-made military air traffic control system to Tanzania, one of the world's poorest countries.
THE deal was worth £28 million to the arms firm, BAE Systems. This is just what is needed in a country so poor that half the population have no access to running water and children die from preventable diseases.
All over the world 24,000 people, mostly children, die from poverty every day. This is the true terrorism, and it is aided and abetted by politicians from rich, privileged and powerful countries who, in the cause of profit and feigning respectability, are salesmen of death. Their victims, and the rest of us, deserve better.
Source: MediaLens.org
On Iraq’s Future
Ezequiel Adamovsky
January 16, 2004
The hidden link between capitalism, social unrest, state violence, and corruption is becoming more and more exposed all over the world. Iraqis do not need to be explained this: George W. Bush is not only killing them on a daily basis, but also privatizing their economy in record time, while giving most contracts to his family’s and friends’ companies. Meanwhile, a puppet Iraqi authority, appointed by the USA, provides pseudo-legitimacy, and gets ready for the moment in which the Imperial master decides to leave the country in Iraqi hands.
Needless to say, there is nothing extraordinarily new to this. The end of this story is well known – we have seen it over and over again in many other regions. The sequence of USA involvement in Iraq reproduces the features and stages of capitalism’s expansion since the nineteenth century, especially (but not only) in Africa and the Middle East:
Stage one: the civilized Empire decides that the barbarians are too brutish to rule themselves and/or are a threat to order and to civilization. From this follows that the Empire has the moral obligation, and of course, the right, to help/enlighten the natives.
Stage two: through a “benevolent” intervention (usually by military methods), the Empire reorganizes the native’s social life. They redraw their territorial arrangements to make them “a nation”, and impose political and economic institutions in agreement with “civil” life. This involves a) the expansion of market relations and capitalist methods of production, and b) the making of a constitutional order that protects individual rights and establishes the foundations of a representative government.
Stage three: the Empire educates and prepares a native elite, to which government can be trusted. After negotiating the terms of “independence”, the Empire makes a splendid departure. In some cases –the examples of Algeria and Vietnam come immediately to one’s mind– such an elite was unavailable, in which case the departure was not so glorious. But in most of Africa and the Middle East the terms of independence were more or less “negotiated” with the collaborative elites.
After stage three, the colonial Empires of the past usually claimed that their mission had been accomplished: the “white man’s burden” or “mission civilisatrice” had been honored.
In the tricky narrative of capitalist expansion, however, the two stages that often followed this “happy ending” of Imperial intervention belong to a different series, seemingly without connection to the colonial past. In the “official history” of civilization, the scenario of social, political and economic instability and dependence that more or less followed colonial intervention throughout the planet is always blamed on the incapacity (or stupidity, or barbarity, or moral shortcomings, or backwardness, you name it) of the natives. So, the sequence continues:
Stage four: in the independent “new nation”, the social tensions that invariably come together with market relations and capitalist methods of production in the context of economic underdevelopment and postcolonial exploitation prove too strong. Social unrest, competition between rival elites and other centrifugal forces are impossible to contain by means of constitutional and “free” political institutions. Anarchy and/or despotic regimes come about. In somewhat “easier” cases or periods, authoritarian and corrupt forms of democracy prevail, periodically shattered by economic and political crises. These scenarios describe more or less the reality of almost every single Third World country during the twentieth century.
Stage five: as the political instability put the geopolitical and/or economic interests of the Empire (and sometimes of their local allies) in jeopardy, the Imperial master makes use of his influence. Unwanted political situations are reverted by a number of different methods: bribes to native politicians, financial support for the opposition, encouragement of coups d’état and military regimes, pressure through international institutions (the IMF being the favorite tool), and so on. The long history of USA commitment to such practices is well known: suffice it to mention the American support of Nicaraguan contras, the Taliban warriors, Suharto, Mobutu, Pinochet or –as recently emerged— the Argentinean dictator Jorge Videla.
Recent developments in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate that a sixth stage might become customary from now on:
Stage six: if all the repertoire of methods informal intervention becomes insufficient to control a certain area, then the Empire may decide that the natives are too brutish to rule themselves and/or are a threat to order and to civilization. From this follows that the Empire has the moral obligation… And we are back in stage one.
The history of Iraq displays all six stages: the British “invention” of the country we now call Iraq during the First World War and the setting up of transnational oil companies (stage one and two), was followed by the establishment of a (Western) monarchical constitution and negotiated independence in 1930 (stage three). After the Second World War a long period of political instability and coups d’état followed (stage four), accompanied by British and American constant “informal” interventions in defense of oil and geopolitical interests (stage five). One of the factions that the USA supported was that of Saddam Hussein, who was later to become their enemy number one. The rest of the story is well known: the first Gulf War of 1991 was followed by direct military occupation of the country in 2003 (stage six/one).
The sequence of Iraq’s past serves to illuminate its most probable future. The USA military adventure is now struggling to advance from stage two to stage three, that is, the splendid departure.
Happy endings, however, do not seem to be likely in the case of Iraq. There is a fundamental difference between the British and the present Imperial episodes. Nobody believes in the narrative of progress and civilization any more –neither the cynic American politicians, nor the global public opinion or the Iraqis. The utter lack of legitimacy of any pro-Western institutional arrangement, and the evident fact that the new “market” economy will benefit anybody but the Iraqis, announce a difficult time for the American “nation builders”.
In this context, it is hard to imagine a long period of stability between an unlikely splendid departure and the beginning of stages four to five; it is improbable indeed that a (at least formally) democratic political life may be combined with a durable pro-Western orientation. If the USA ever finds the right moment for departure (a chance that, by the way, they are desperately longing for), it seems the most obvious scenario for Iraq’s future that the sequence of instability-jeopardizing of Western interests-intervention will overlap all in one.
True, the Empire (be it the USA or the UN) may re-initiate the sequence at any time, simply by deciding that the natives are still too brutish to rule themselves. But the whole effectiveness of the “civilization” narrative collapses if the “learner” does not seem to be learning at all. Without legitimacy, the Empire will probably be dragged to a permanent low-intensity military intervention –just as in the present. In any case, even without Saddam, Iraq’s future looks gloomy in the new world of the permanent global war; but so does the Empire’s.
Source: ZNet Sustainers Magazine
Smart Sanctions
Rebuilding Consensus or Maintaining Conflict?
Marc Lynch
June 28, 2001
Heated debate in the UN Security Council on June 26 previewed the coming showdown over the US-British "smart sanctions" initiative, designed to "re-energize" the international consensus on sanctions against Iraq. Faced with declining international support for and compliance with the current sanctions, the United States and the United Kingdom are pushing a major package of sanctions "reforms." The US-UK proposal would allow some civilian goods into Iraq, while tightening embargoes on others and retaining the UN's financial control over the Iraqi economy. Security Council Resolution 1352, passed on June 1, requires a decision on sanctions reform by July 3. But it now seems unlikely that this target will be met. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov warned on June 25 that his country "cannot allow [this measure] to pass." France and China are working to reshape the proposal rather than rejecting it outright. Iraq, for its part, has emphatically denounced the proposal from the start. Most of the frontline states which would be charged with implementing the new sanctions regime -- particularly Jordan -- have expressed strong opposition.
It is important to be clear about what is, and what is not, at stake. The Security Council debate foreshadows the end of the current sanctions regime. Should it succeed, "smart sanctions" would revitalize the sanctions on Iraq -- against prevailing international opinion. The plan would rebuild a narrow Security Council consensus, and blunt the force of rising opposition to the sanctions. But the reform would emphatically not end the sanctions on Iraq, and probably would not significantly improve the lives of Iraqi civilians. Continued "dual-use" restrictions and the escrow account would keep the Iraqi economy highly centralized and cash-poor. What is more, the current emphasis on making the sanctions more efficient comes at the expense of moves toward lifting the sanctions outright. Should "smart sanctions" fail, the status quo -- a deeply unpopular formal sanctions regime which is increasingly ignored -- will remain in place. But given US dissatisfaction with the status quo, the failure of sanctions reform might well lead the US to adopt a more aggressive and unilateral approach to the persistent problem of Iraq.
WHY "SMART SANCTIONS"?
"Smart sanctions" are not motivated by humanitarian concern. The US and UK advanced the "smart sanctions" proposal because the existing sanctions are unpopular and full of holes. After the Desert Fox bombings of December 1998, the US and UK stood almost alone in support of sanctions. Media reports and public debate increasingly focused on Iraq's humanitarian disaster rather than on Iraqi non-compliance with weapons inspections. US and British arguments placing blame for the humanitarian crisis solely on the Iraqi regime's shoulders were clear losers in the international public sphere. On the ground, the volume of oil smuggling has grown exponentially, as the price of oil increased, sympathy for the Iraqi people mounted and the moral stigma of violating UN sanctions eroded. Painstaking negotiations over Resolution 1284 in December 1999 failed to achieve either Security Council consensus (Russia, China and France abstained) or Iraqi compliance with the new inspections agency UNMOVIC. The US and UK needed to shift the terms of the debate if they hoped to keep the sanctions in place.
United against the status quo, the Bush administration divided internally over what to do. Conservatives -- led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- called for increased military pressure and support for the Iraqi opposition. Even this proposal only temporarily appeased Republican hawks in Congress. But two years of unpublicized, stepped-up bombing of Iraq around the no-fly zones -- with little tangible gain and the specter of US losses -- has worn down the morale of US forces. The Iraqi opposition in exile remains in disarray. Iraq's neighbors, focused on the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, were unwilling to endorse such an aggressive policy. Russian, Chinese and French opposition made it clear that there would be no Security Council authorization forthcoming. "Smart sanctions" emerged as a strategy to save the sanctions by addressing the major points of international critics, while also fending off pressure from domestic hawks. As Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked on March 8, "smart sanctions are meant to rescue the sanctions, not to abandon them." Should Powell's initiative fail, the hawks will be well-positioned to push their alternatives.
TOWARD PERMANENT SANCTIONS?
The "smart sanctions" proposal would open up trade in civilian goods, allowing such contracts to be approved directly by the UN Secretariat instead of being reviewed by the controversial UN Sanctions Committee. Not only anti-sanctions campaigners, but also UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other UN officials, have sharply criticized the US and British "holds" on contracts submitted to the Committee. As of May 31, $3.7 billion in contracts were in limbo due to US or UK objections. But "smart sanctions" retains a list of "dual-use" items -- items that could have military applications -- that would still be reviewed by the Sanctions Committee, allowing further US and UK "holds" or vetoes. The contents of this list have been the object of intense and so far fruitless negotiations, with the US defending an expansive definition of "dual-use." If the US definition is adopted in a final resolution, then little will change besides the transparency of the contract review process.
Re-establishing UN control over Iraqi finances by channeling all oil revenue through the UN escrow account lies at the core of "smart sanctions." The US and UK have been deeply troubled by the dramatic increase in the flow of revenues into Iraqi government coffers from smuggling and a surtax on oil. Because they fear that Iraq will use unmonitored revenues to rearm itself, the US and UK insist on maintaining control over all Iraqi financial transactions. "Smart sanctions" attempts to cut off these independent revenue sources. The UK draft of June 20 offers "states sharing land borders" the right to purchase 150,000 barrels of oil per day in exchange for eliminating smuggling.
Powell's "smart sanctions" plan allows limited foreign investment in services but not, as the French in particular want, in the oil sector. As for the controversial compensation fund that skims 25 percent off the top of Iraq's oil sales to pay reparations to Kuwait and others, the UK draft of June 8 suggested pushing the percentage up to 30. The US-UK proposal makes almost no reference to inspections, which had been a primary bone of contention in the arduous 1284 negotiations. Where those talks revolved around the "trigger" for the lifting of sanctions, the US and UK now seem inclined to present "smart sanctions" as a more or less permanent system, quietly removing the option of lifting (rather than suspending) the sanctions from the table.
UNLIKELY CONSENSUS
Iraq immediately rejected "smart sanctions," and halted oil sales on June 4 to protest Resolution 1352. The regime has every reason to expect the continued de facto erosion of existing sanctions without its concessions on weapons inspections. With smuggling revenue exploding, and borders increasingly porous, the Iraqi regime -- if not the Iraqi people -- is doing better economically. Despite US insistence on a policy which does not depend upon Iraqi cooperation, the reality is that the UN's Office of the Iraq Program, with its elaborate system of contracts and administration of the Iraqi economy, can not operate without Iraqi oil sales. Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan has warned that the adoption of "smart sanctions" would be the end of the Oil for Food program. Iraq has denounced France in scathing language for trying to achieve Security Council consensus, and repeatedly threatened to punish any neighboring state which cooperates with a new sanctions plan. The regime's furious response reflects its recognition that -- however unlikely it is -- the rebuilding of Security Council consensus could derail its strategy for escaping sanctions.
Within the Security Council, strong support for alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Iraq mingles with hesitations about the "smart sanctions" reforms. Russia has taken the lead in opposing the proposal. After forcing the postponement of the decision until July 3, on June 25 Russia leaked a letter stating that it would not support the proposed resolution. In an open Security Council debate that it called for June 26, Russia complained that "smart sanctions" would perpetuate the sanctions rather than move towards lifting them through the disarmament process. France has attempted to minimize the extent of international control over the Iraqi economy, pushing for a restrictive definition of "dual-use" items, a minimal UN bureaucratic presence in the administration of the Iraqi economy and permission for investment in the Iraqi oil sector. The French want to further loosen trade restrictions for Iraq's neighbors, and further cut the percentage of revenue channeled to the compensation fund. Their approach, which holds out the potential for creating a new consensus among the Western powers, has come under the most ferocious attack from the Iraqi regime. China has been more vocal than during previous deliberations over Iraq, probably reflecting the deteriorating US-Chinese relationship.
Most of the frontline states which would carry the burden of enforcing the new sanctions regime have outspokenly opposed it. Only Turkey has offered conditional support. Jordan has taken an unusually direct position of opposition to "smart sanctions." While Iraqi threats of retaliation played some role, the Jordanian position more reflects the overwhelming Arab public consensus against the sanctions and the enormous economic stakes. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa reflected widespread Arab opinion by attacking the proposal as simply repackaging the sanctions rather than addressing the real problems.
With considerable justification, the anti-sanctions movement has criticized "smart sanctions" as an attempt to salvage a morally bankrupt policy. The Bush administration's alternative plans may be worse. The US will block Russia's counter-proposal to simply lift sanctions. Failure in the Security Council may well push the US to a more unilateral approach, including the revival of escalated military options, while keeping the existing sanctions in place.
Marc Lynch teaches political science at Williams College.
First Published on Middle East Report Online
Not Our Fight? Why blacks are skeptical of war
Salim Muwakkil, April 9, 2003
A variety of national polls have revealed that African-Americans are as much as three times more likely than whites to oppose U.S. military action in Iraq. A Gallup poll released March 28, for example, found that 68 percent of black Americans opposed the war, while only 20 percent of whites did. Other polls found similar divides.
These strikingly disparate views surprise some, given the paucity of black faces at the major anti-war protests. They also are surprising, given the disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans who serve in the armed forces. Black recruits make up 22 percent of enlisted personnel in all branches of the armed forces, nearly double their representation in the population. Half of all enlisted women in the Army are black, while 38 percent are white.
Many African-Americans are attracted to the military because it provides opportunities sorely lacking in civilian life. In fact, the U.S. military is among the most desegregated institutions in American life. Cynics may argue that this is so because the armed forces need cannon fodder, but the reasons are more complicated and perhaps less malign.
According to a Defense Department report, African-Americans in the armed forces earn an average of $32,000 per year, compared with the average African-American salary in the private sector of $27,900. What’s more, the military is a strong supporter of affirmative action and has even offered a legal brief to the Supreme Court in its latest deliberation on the matter.
And yet despite African-Americans’ disproportionate presence in the military (or perhaps because of it), the black community is not gung ho for military action. “It has to do with black folks’ tradition of opposition to war,” explains Ronald Walters, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland. “We join the services and take part in war, but we often are opposed to it for moral reasons.”
African-American views on the Iraq conflict confirm that tradition. “All the way through the debate on the war, blacks have been less supportive,” Carroll Doherty, of the Washington-based Pew Research Center, told Newsday. “It’s such an interesting finding, and I think a lot of people put their own interpretation on it.”
The tradition of war opposition is amplified by African-Americans’ antipathy for President George W. Bush and the right-wing regime he fronts; they don’t trust an administration that has turned its back on some of the black community’s most essential issues. African-Americans routinely are told that the government has insufficient funds to improve their relatively dismal state of housing, health care and education, yet it seems to easily find the funds to conduct an illegal invasion of Iraq and the subsequent reconstruction.
This is an historical pattern of duplicity that is familiar to African-Americans. From the early days of the republic, when a Constitution extolling freedom tolerated slavery, blacks have learned to be suspicious of American leadership. Those suspicions have been vindicated through centuries of brutal and dismissive treatment from white leadership.
Bush has a particularly heavy onus to overcome because of the fiasco of the 2000 elections. While most Americans may have put Bush’s dubious ascension behind them, many African-Americans still view him as an illegitimate president. Although the events of September 11, 2001 have somewhat softened African-Americans’ negative views of Bush, the president remains widely unpopular in the black community. “This is George Bush’s war, and African-Americans neither trust nor like George Bush,” says David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
The Congressional Black Caucus has also been in the front lines of opposition to the Iraqi invasion. Thirty-four of the 38 caucus members last year voted against giving Bush the authority to go to war, and since the invasion, many still express opposition, though they are careful to note support for American troops.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-New York) has been one of the caucus’ most vocal opponents of war. He also has been pushing a bill that would restore the draft, a maneuver that is widely seen as an attempt to embarrass pro-war legislators for supporting a conflict in which few of their children will have to fight. Rangel argues that the country’s minorities and poor will bear the brunt of U.S. belligerence.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) is also a vocal critic of U.S. military action in the region. In fact, she was way out in front of the pack, as the only House member to vote against a 2001 resolution authorizing President Bush to use force against anyone associated with the 9/11 attacks.
Some commentators have interpreted blacks’ lack of enthusiasm for war as a lack of patriotism. This is an old accusation, and it has roots in the Revolutionary War, when thousands of enslaved Africans escaped bondage and joined the British army. These escapees were derided as traitors by the rebellious colonies, although the British “enemy” offered them freedom from slavery. The Continental leadership failed to understand how their repressive treatment of African-Americans did little to fuel black patriotism. And yet despite those perverse incentives, thousands of black men eventually joined the Continental army to fight the British—although with considerable ambivalence.
The incentives today are not quite so perverse, but African-Americans still remain skeptical of U.S. military adventure.
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, where he has worked since 1983, and an op-ed columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He is currently a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute, examining the impact of ex-inmates and gang leaders in leadership positions in the black community.
Courtesy of In These Times
