Rice said the new approach reflects growing Arab concern about Iran's attempt to project power through its proxies: "After the war in Lebanon, the Middle East really did begin to clarify into an extremist element allied with Iran, including Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. On the other side were the targets of this extremism--the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Palestinians--and those who want to resist, such as the Saudis, Egypt and Jordan."David Ignatius is a relatively reliable stenographer to the court du dauphin des États-unis. So this is what the governing elite thinks about the Middle East.
Several tempting questions: What is the difference between "the Lebanese" and Hezbollah? What is the difference between "the Palestinians" and Hamas? I know that the American habit is to presume innate illegitimacy in any election of whose results we disapprove, but at some point, on some level, even wishing away all the moral objections to American imperialism in the Middle East, there remains an apparently insurmountable practical impediment to our rule and hegemony in the region: We cannot and will not accurately identify our allies and enemies there. This is where the imperial rubber meets the Appian Way, such as it is. If you wish to conquer the barbarians, and doubly so if you wish to rule them, you must at very least learn to discern which tribes are your enemies and which are your friends, and how firmly each is tethered to their side in that fight.
Put aside the question the question of which party is responsible for the most recent Israeli-Lebanese war. Put aside the question of who attacked whom, or of which side kidnapped the other's citizens or soldiers first. There remains a singular reality. Hezbollah is the most popular political party in Lebanon. It is the most popular entity in Lebanon. It was the most popular prior to the Israeli campaign, and no matter how many bouquets and scrims and garlands and fancy lights the American government throws between its perceptions and the Lebanese reality, it's a plain and simple fact that no people will perceive the aerial bombardment of their territory by a foreign country as an effort to eradicate some select group therein. Imagine that France began bombing the plains states in order to wipe out the Republican Party. There you have an accuarate analogy for Israel's policy in Lebanon, and from there you can extrapolate a response. Hezbollah is more popular than ever. It is not a foreign influence in Lebanon. It is not a cancer on the Lebanese body politic. It is Lebanon, and the United States and Israel made it so.
Hamas, likewise, is the predominant political entity among Palestinian peoples. It isn't obligatory to like it, but it is obligatory to recognize it. They didn't acquire parliamentary majorities by rigging Diebold machines or taking closely contested election results to court. They routed Fatah. They represent--at least--a near-majority opinion of Palestinians.
If Hezbollah and Hamas are "extremist," then the Palestinians and the Lebanese are extremist. (Martin Peretz rubs his hands together and gloats: Told ya so!) Our other purported allies in the region are semi-theocratic hereditary monarchies, and the notion that hereditary rule in the twenty-first century is anything other than "extreme" would be laughable were we not governed by a surnamed Bush. The Saudi monarchy is regarded by many Muslims as a coterie of apostate, degenerate, luxury- and license-besotted deviants, but they've managed to hang onto power by telling their restive, under-employed young men that the United States is even worse. Osama bin Laden, our once and future Hitler, detests the House of Saud for "inviting" the American military onto the Arabian peninsula even more than he detests the American military for taking them up on the offer. This notion of supporting the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies while working to undermine the popularly-elected popular movements in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories is laughably, farcically absurd. Needless to say, David Ignatius believes that "Rice's realignment idea has the virtue of offering a basis for discussion and careful thinking about a region perched on the edge of a volcano."
Colonialism is one of the great evils in this world, and I am of the belief that imperial projects are necessarily doomed in the long run and morally unacceptable regardless, but even so, there is a perverse embarrassment in recognizing what a lousy, second-rate conquerer our nation is; there is a sort of historical shame in recognizing that we are the laziest, stupidest, most incompetent bunch of world-shapers since Mussolini first stuffed his shirt and marched on Rome. Barring those goofy fascisti, I can't think of a preeminent power so goddamn bad at being powerful. The governors of our nation want to rule the world, yes, but they'd rather tell themselves pleasant lies about the natives and go on drinking Claret and eating tea sandwiches at the club.
17 comments:
Mussolini's Italy wasn't powerful, it was always a pathetic malarial backwater. Basically Milan and suburbs. The only reason they got an empire was France and England decided at Versailles that four powers were necessary.
IOW, we are the stupidest bunch of worldshapers since, I dunno, Belgium? The Qajars? Savoy? Anjou?
Moloch-Agon: since the post-Julio-Claudian Romans, perhaps?
Well all very true, but I can't help but think that this line of thought can lead in some very ugly directions. You go to war, or peace as the case may be, with the electorate that you come with, not the electorate that you want. I've said before that we are, ultimately, an imperial power not because our political elites have somehow hijacked the government from the American people, but because THAT'S WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT. Convince them of the facts in your post, and I bet they'd fall in to line behind Marty and his batch of crazy genocidists, rather than saner people like our host.
Our only hope isn't that the American people somehow realize what they are doing and recoil in horror. The yawns which greeted the enshrinement of torture into our laws is enough evidence of that. Our hope is that the American people, if they can be made to see how high the cost TO THE UNITED STATES is of maintaining our position in the Middle East, in our blood and treasure, and recoil in horror at that.
But at this late stage of the game, I wouldn't put much hope in that.
In my own case, I was never exactly a FAN of the United State's foreign policy, but what moved me away from my prior, fairly conventional center left view of foriegn affairs, and toward a more isolationist view, was (mostly) the realization that ultimately we were going to face a choice of more or less complete disengagment from the middle east or committing unimaginable horrors. I'm not so sure that most people, faced with that realization, are going to move in the same direction. In fact, I rather think the opposite.
My predidction, at about a 70% degree of certainly: 10 years from now, worldwide depression making the last one look like a picnic, 100 million dead Muslims at our hands, several American cities nuked in retaliation and Israel a smoking hole in the ground.
But hey, there's good news: if we get incredibly lucky and the level of devastation is just right, maybe a dash of nuclear winter will forestall global warming.
I actually agree with larry. I think the American people have been trained for so long and so relentlessly and so cleverly, that they are eager to do more rapin' and bombin' and killin' them dark skinned heathens.
I think the "answer" is coming-utter bankruptcy and perhaps eventually the collapse of the centralized state. The Articles of Cofederation folks were right. Heck, I think increasingly that Lincoln was wrong.
But M_A, Abyssinia! I deliberately picked the absurd example. For the absurdity.
Brian, stop thinking about it. Lincoln was wrong.
One kind of interesting point (well interesting to me). I said above that there were two choices - disengaement or horrific carnege. Obviously that's in the long term; of course in the short run we can continue our half assed efforts at imperialism on a budget, but at some point we going to have to confront that start choice.
Except - and if I was really thinking like an imperialist - the other obvious choice - a grand bargain with Iran, where we would, in essence, divide the middle east between us. Of course that was the grand bargain that was more of less offered to us a few years ago, and rejected out of hand. Mind you, I'm not advocating that, but it's pretty clear that if we were led by SMART imperialists, that's what would have happened, more of less. And it would at least have avoided (maybe) the horrific future that we seem to be barrelling toward now.
Of course, while that would solve a LOT of problems, including most likely Israel's, it would leave a few lose ends, not the least of which would be Pakistan. And, again, I'm not ADVOCATING it, as I've become convinced we just need to get the hell out. But since that doesn't appear to be an option right now - well, to quote a commenter here from a few months ago, I'd rather be led by the sane evil people than the crazy evil people.
There is a really funny description of the Abyssinia campaign in AJP Taylor. The problem was that the Ethiopes and Nubians had been accepted into the League of Nations in 1925 over British objections that they were "too barbarous to join the civilized community at Geneva." Now with Mussolini poised to conquer--"for reasons which are still diffcult to grasp"--he basically got a big Cheerio-O:
"The British generals and admirals at the time were mostly elderly; they were all Conservatives of an extreme cast. They admired Mussolini. They found in Fascism a display of all the military virtues. On the other hand, they detested the League of Nations and everything associated with it." (p. 93)
As Taylor points out, the rapid fall of Abyssinia to Mussolini (followed by anguished protestations from League members not unlike those of U.S. Senators today) was for all intents and purposes the end of the League of Nations. When world war broke out in September 1939 no one bothered to inform Geneva!
Incidentally, I got your rhetorical strategy, I was just trying to one-up you. Ragusa, anyone?
Actually, you could argue that Mussolini's Italy was a pretty successful colonial power compared to the contemporary United States. In retrospect it's only mistake was hitching it's fortunes to Germany. But at the time that had to look like a pretty safe bet.
I'd rather be led by the sane evil people than the crazy evil people.
So… “I don't mind how evil I and my side have to be as long as it makes more sense to me than the other side.”
This is the core of why dictators, fascists, monarchs, whobodies are so persistent in history and might always be. This isn't an elite or educated or thoughtful view. This is the base instinct tied deep in the R-complex that keeps humans with one foot firmly rooted in the sub-human.
I doubt you really think this but this is where the line of reasoning naturally went because it is where the process of taking responsibility away from individuals and giving it to a group takes everyone.
[Sidebar: (yes! back to FDR, WW II was on the table already) FDR admired Il Duce and how he was able to make the trains run on time.]
I would argue that our elite, though, disdains tea and sandwiches. They play tennis, and golf, and jog. And hunt caged pheasant. They are all MANLY MEN! :)
ashley,
We seem fated to keep misunderstanding each other. I'd think that by now you would know enough of my thought processes to see just how unfair your comment is.
OF COURSE I'd rather be led by the non-evil people. I don't think that anyone here thinks that that's likely any time soon. Since sane evil people would, at least, be far more likely to avoid armeggedon, I would think that perhaps you might want to get off the ivory tower for just a second and at least acknowledge the possibility.
The irony is that even on a site like this one, I don't think that you guys understand just how deep the precipice is that we are now standing on the edge of.
I don't think I said I'd rather be led by sane evil people. Remember the immortal words of Marx: "Hey, you can't-ah fool me, there is no Sanity Clause!"
And yeah, they all liked Mussolini, including FDR, that little fascist.
"You could argue"? Oh please, do give it a try. Italy under Mussolini was a macaronic spaghetti power.
"In Fascist Italy the economic argument was altogether irrelevant. There was no Fascist system of economics--only a poor country ruled by a mixture of terror and glamor. Italy was quite unprepared for war, as Mussolini admitted by remaining 'non belligerent' in 1939. When he finally took the plunge in 1940, Italy was worse equipped for war, in every way, than she had been when she entered the first World War in 1915....
"Italy had conquered Abyssinia. Far from deriving profit from this, she found its pacification and development an almost impossible drain on her limited resources. Though some Italians settled there this work of colonization was done for reasons of prestige; it would have been cheaper and more profitable to maintain them at home. Immediately before the outbreak of war, Mussolini repeatedly demanded Corsica, Nice, and Savoy. None of these, except possibly Nice, offered any economic advantage; even Nice could not help in solving Italy's real problem of a poor country and a dense population." (p. 104)
Say what you want to about America, and certainly we're not deriving much profit at this point from our attempted colony, but our army's pretty good, and our choice of targets (for those with an eye with empire and domination) was not unreasonable. After all, Iraq's got large deposits of... oh yeah, I know: freedom!
IOZ - it wasn't you who said that, but one of your commenters. As I recall, you indicated a certain appreciation of the point without quite agreeing with it.
M-A - restricting the issue to colonial policy per se, and a consideration of the RESULTS, I stand by what I said. Whether Iraq was a more sensible object in the abstract, the reality is something else. The fact that we are a real military power, and Italy was not, IMO just makes the comparison tilt further against us. Sort of doing less with more.
Not to defend Italy's little adventure, even from an imperialistic perspective. The fact that one can argue that they were, however, more successful (or, rather, less unsuccessful) that the contemporary United States is just damning commentary on the current group of clowns.
I just wanted an excuse to quote Chico.
Ashley, you may not stop writing. Interdit.
larry: I guess I am a little more dogmatic than you. How does one define a "successful" colonial tyrrany? "Successful" for whom?
brian,
In terms of the current discussion, success for the interests of the imperial power, of course. I mean, that's not how I would define it, but recall how this whole thing started, as a response to our host's post regarding how bad the United States is at being powerful.
And remember, in terms of the Italy comparision, it's not who is more successful, but less unsuccessful. As hard as it may be for some of us to see these things from the perspective of the war parties, the Iraq venture has been a hideous debacle for the American Imperial venture. A silver lining from the pespective of most of us, of course.
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