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08.30 Casinos and Today’s Scam Artists
Ref.: Civic Events
Ref.: Arts & Education Events
Ref.: Public Service Notices
Ref. : Letters to the editor
09.04 Here We Go Again: Another Rig Explosion
08.31 Legislation for Greater Agribusiness Empowerment
08.25 America's Gulf: Updating the Greatest Ever Environmental Crime
08.16 Obama's Gulf Swim Was Fake
08.11 America's Gulf: A Toxic Crime Scene
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries
09.02 How the Right Still Frames Iraq
08.26 The Israeli Lobby: Declassified Documents Expose Its Influence
08.18 Tell NBC: Sunday Morning Needs a Real War Debate
08.12 Who Gets to Review and Be Reviewed?
08.12 Net Neutrality Threatened
08.11 Situation Room Scaremongering
Ref. : The Daily Howler
09.05 Ripping Off Dead War Vets' Beneficiaries
09.01 Continuity of Government: Coup d'Etat Authority in America
08.31 Lawsuit Challenges Obama Administration's Targeted Assassination Policy
08.28 Ramsey Muniz - Guilty of Being Latino and Activist in America
08.17 Gender-Based Violence in Haiti
08.16 The Scott Sisters: Victimized by American Injustice
08.15 Universal Jurisdiction to Hold Israel Accountable
08.13 From Goldstone to Uribe
09.05 The True Cost of the War
09.03 Reflections on Jack Kennedy
09.02 The Dishonor of Militarism
09.02 Katrina's Destructive Aftermath
08.30 Persecuting a Conciliator
08.29 Yale University's Pro-Israeli, Anti-Islamic Conference
08.27 Hawks Box in Obama on Afghan War
08.24 Iraq Pullout: Mission Accomplished or Strategic Retreat?
08.23 Thinking About Lying
08.23 America Knows How to Do Xenophobia
08.20 Spinning the US Failure in Iraq
08.19 Part Tinker Bell, Part Predator Drone: The Fantasy of the Presidency as Deus ex Machina
08.16 Thinking About Rainbows
08.16 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
08.12 A Neocon Preps US for War with Iran
08.31 America's Holy Crusade against the Muslim World
08.23 The Laureate and the Leaker: Swedish Warrant a Salvo in Team Obama's War on Wikileaks
08.18 Impact of Israeli Military Order No. 1650
08.14 Gaza's Poisoned Water
08.13 Timebends: The Further Fruits of Wikileaks' Revelation
08.12 Don't Try These GOP Alibis at Home
08.10 The Charade Begins: Netanyahu's Flotilla Massacre Probe Testimony
09.06 Thinking About Labor
08.30 Thinking About Fear
08.27 America Facing Depression and Bankruptcy
08.19 Homeowners' Rebellion: Could 62 Million Homes be Foreclosure-proof?
09.06 Honduran Repression Continues Unabated
09.05 Sanctions kill innocent civilians: Who pays for the loss of life in Iran?
08.30 Israel will not choose to attack Iran: Harun Yahya
08.30 Israel Threatens War with Lebanon
08.24 Notes from Besieged Gaza
08.23 Washington Orders Shahbaz Airbase Saved, not Pakistan's Flood Victims
08.23 Political Killings in Colombia
08.23 A united Iran against a collapsing Israel
08.22 The Charade Announced: Latest Israeli No-Peace Peace Talks for September
08.21 Israeli Academic Freedom at Risk
08.20 Israel's Bogus Construction Moratorium
08.19 We hear "Israel will attack Iran!" and "America will Israel attack Iran!" over and over
08.19 Palestine: Occupied, Divided, Isolated, Oppressed and Unaided
08.15 Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan: Diplomacy of Brotherhood
COMMENTARY:
Global Warming, Global Hostilities: Futility of a Super-Power
Middle East Balance Sheet: What's been accomplished?
It certainly made sense to go after Bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on U.S. targets (though it would have been better to have used our prior intelligence to prevent those attacks), but the U.S. let Bin Laden escape and instead bombed the impoverished nation of Afghanistan, pushed out the Taliban, and put in its own ineffectual leader, Hamid Karzai. This has led to a resurgence of strength among the tribal warlords and a return to opium production so now Afghanistan is the major world source of heroin; and the Taliban is regaining power. The U.S. has caused damage in Afghanistan, stirred things up, but the end result has been anything but positive. An enduring legacy is the grim provocation of Guantánamo.
The central cause of hostility toward the U.S. in the Middle East, though at this stage it's clearly only one among many, is and remains our total financial, military, and diplomatic support of our client state, Israel. How are things going there? The situation has grown worse and worse. The Palestinians in the occupied territories are living in a vast prison of walled-in cantons. They are being starved, squeezed out, killed. The Palestinians had a democratic election following the death of Arafat and chose a militant Islamic party, Hamas. The U.S. and Israel did not like that kind of democracy and economic boycotting and violent attacks have followed. Now, Israel has renewed war with, or rather on, Lebanon, spurred by actions once again not by the ineffectual Lebanese government but by Palestinian militants. The U.S. is doing nothing to calm down this situation. Following capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbullah and firing of rockets on Haifa, Israel struck Lebanon and killed more than sixty civilians. The U.S. will do what it can to block international condemnation of this action. The U.S. has just vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, even though the resolution called for release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and an end to rocket attacks on Israel. The U.S., in other words, has chosen to do nothing--to let the fires rage out of control.
Maybe there's a connection between our current official indifference as a nation to both peacemaking and restoring eco-balance. In both cases, whether by action or inaction, the Bush administration is a force for destabilization rather than planetary harmony.
In Iran, again a collective effort has proven to be preferable to the U.S.'s threat of unilateral action earlier this year. It's obvious that Iran's nuclear program is no immediate threat to the U.S. and that North Korea is more of a threat. North Korea isn't really capable of damaging U.S. targets either; nor is even North Korea foolish enough to court destruction by trying to do so. Why, by the way, doesn't the U.S. talk to the North Koreans? That would be the best way to tone them down and normalize relations. Likewise with Iran. But again, behind the U.S.'s provocative approach to the Iran nuclear program loomed the neo-con plan, which we now know well: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran. They want to attack Iran, because they like the idea. To show who's boss.
But who's boss? Is being the biggest bully in the schoolyard the best way to run a globalized world?
As for Israel and the U.S., if the tail is wagging the dog it's less noticeable, since U.S. and Israeli interests in subduing the countries surrounding America's little client state are in such harmony. In Ambassador John Bolton, whose stated aim is to further weaken the already downgraded United Nations, Israel has a good friend. The U.S. has cast eight of the last nine vetoes at the Security Council, and seven of them pertained to sanctioning Israel. Hostilities between Palestinian militants and Israel and Israel's attacks on Lebanon go on while -- with relatively imperceptible violence -- Israel goes on pursuing what Noam Chomsky has recently called its "steady takeover of the West Bank, which, in effect, if it continues, is just the murder of a nation." That's the main event. And the U.S. does nothing to stop it. If journalist Robert Fisk is right on this, as he often seems to be, the key is Syria. And Syria is out of reach. As usual the most important events aren't the ones most prominently reported. And what the U.S. is doing in the region is at best ineffectual and at worst highly dangerous.
It's hard to see anything positive resulting from U.S. Middle East policy. It becomes increasingly difficult to see logic in it, either. It would be nice if one could really argue that the U.S. is in the Middle East for oil, and that its presence there has furthered US control of the oil supply. That at least would make some simple kind of sense. Forceful in wielding his native guile and charm but lacking in logic or information, George W. Bush has actually declared that "we must end our dependence" on the dark fluid, but the administration's choices for alternative fuels, ethanol and hydrogen, seem as empty as that statement. Hydrogen is widely believed to be inefficient and too high in cost. Ethanol has many problems and Butanol is considered preferable. The push for ethanol may be that it is combined with gasoline, and hence its use is easier on the oil and automotive industries. Both of these, as opposed to electric power, continue the use of the internal combustion engine. The talk of alternatives seems mostly a distraction from the fact that when it comes to energy the administration's main push is for more of the same. However, the U.S. auto industry seems to be dying, even though oil and gas use continue at high levels.
What a waste our life as a species remains so long as governments can't organize for peace and rational action, such as the primary one of doing what we can to preserve the planet.
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This story was published on July 17, 2006.
