Sharon/Iraq: for want of a nail

"In the 1920s, Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky called for Israel to rule “from the Nile to the Euphrates,” as the famous slogan went, by smashing the fragile mosaic of its Arab neighbors into ethnic fragments, then seizing the oil riches of Arabia. So Israel’s far Right and its American neocon fellow travelers are perfectly happy to see Iraq divided de facto into its three component ethnic parts: Shia, Sunni Arab, and Kurd. Better a feeble Iraq broken into weak cantons, like post-1975 Lebanon, than a nation united, even under a U.S.-run regime." Eric S. Margolis (hat to Christoher Guida)

David Seaton's News Links
Over the last couple of days Norman Finkelstein, who I admire very much, and Alan Greenspan who I don't, have both voiced the opinion that Israel was not behind the American invasion of Iraq.

I could hardly ever disagree with Norman Finkelstein, who is one of the bravest of American intellectuals about anything, but on the causes of the invasion of Iraq, I regretfully have to differ with him.

It is/was all about Israel, because Israel really is in a desperate situation. The entire flow of world affairs is going against Israel and the Israelis and the "friends of Israel" are pulling out all the stops trying to remake the Middle East in their favor while America is still the hegemon.

I am of the opinion that the destruction of Iraq as a functioning state -- its being broken up into separate, nonthreatening (for Israel,) mini-states -- as is happening now, was not an unforeseen eventuality. It was in fact one of the primary objectives of the war.

For Israel, Kurdistan, bordering hostile Iran, Syria and Turkey and totally dependent on American and Israeli support for its existence, is an enormous strategic asset.

The next step after the "shock and awe" was to move directly on a supposedly terrified Iran and provoke regime change in that country... Iran was always the objective -- Iraq was a stepping stone to that objective. "Anybody can go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran". With both Iraq and Iran neutralized Israel would be free to deal with the rest of the Muslim world as it wished, ad infinitum.

From the Israeli point of view all this makes sense. It is from the American point of view that things don't add up.

What none of the perps suspected is how wrong it would all go, or that the Republican Guard would just take off their uniforms and start effective guerrilla warfare.

I believe that the brains behind all of this were Ariel Sharon's. He is/was the only person in this story with enough strategic vision and Gordian Knot decisiveness to have come up with something as "game changing" as this debacle. We are looking at an evolution of such daring concepts as his crossing the Suez Canal in 1973, which saved Israel from defeat, his invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to obliterate Arafat and the OLP, or his creating today's Palestinian Bantustans behind walls and calling it peace. Only Sharon always looks to deliver the one punch knockout in every round. He is/was always on the brink of disaster, always tightrope walking out.

Unfortunately for the game plan, if not the world at large, Sharon's brain is now in never-never land and none of the clods left behind in Jerusalem or Washington can fill his shoes, much less his suits. There is no one left with enough of his evil moxie to sort this mess out.

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a nail."

DS

Blair and Wolfie, a snapshot of Limbo

"There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming." 'Riverbend'

David Seaton's News Links
Occasionally political life produces delicious synchronicities. In the same week that Tony Blair threw in the towel, Paul Wolfowitz, one of the most influential promoters of the war in Iraq, the event most responsible for spoiling Blair's brilliant career, begged a stony faced board of the World Bank not to forcibly remove him from his post as its president. Both men have been brought low by a war that began over four years ago.

In Umberto Eco's bestseller "The Name of the Rose", those who tried to read Aristotle's "Book on Comedy", were poisoned by just touching the pages. Although many would like to move on, "turning the page" on Iraq is just as futile. Invading Iraq was a serious strategic error which Israel's legendary military guru, Martin VanCreveld considers, "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them" and which others have gone so far as to compare with Hitler's suicidal invasion of Russia. One of the differences between a tactical error and a strategic error is that strategic errors don’t go away, paraphrasing an old advertising slogan, they are “the gift that keeps on giving”. Like Aristotle's "Book on Comedy," they simply don’t allow their pages to be turned.

Blair's predecessor, Harold Macmillan, envisioned Britain's relationship with America's rude "new Rome" as that of the wise and cultured Greeks, but in Iraq it fell to Tony Blair to fully explore the meanings of the word "Greek", because as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim wrote in the Guardian, "Blair failed to understand that America's really special relationship is with Israel, not Britain. Every time that George Bush had to choose between Blair and Ariel Sharon, he chose the latter." In fact, for the neocons like Wolfowitz who promoted it, the invasion of Iraq was a success until Ariel Sharon lapsed into coma. In fact, a shattered, chaotic Arab world divided into fractious "reinos de Taifas" incapable of uniting against Israel and the subsequent devastation of Iran were the invasion's true objects. Only the brilliant Sharon could ever have hoped to navigate in such chaos: the "sorcerer's apprentices" like Bush and Ehud Olmert are lost in the wreckage and Blair's career is just another broken toy.

Blair and Wolfowitz can go home now and write their memoirs, but Bush, likewise paralyzed by Iraq's poisoned pages, has a year and a half of political limbo left in the White House. Albert R. Hunt, Bloomberg's Washington bureau wrote, "Almost two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance. Bush is reviled around much of the world and has precious little political capital at home. This has enormous implications for foreign policy, domestic politics and the legislative agenda for the next year and a half." The behavior of Iran, Russia and Venezuela bear out Bloomberg's analysis. DS

Tony Blair: carrying water for the golem

"Blair failed to understand that America's really special relationship is with Israel, not Britain.(...) The neoconservatives who drove American policy were interested in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and in nothing else." - Avi Shlaim

David Seaton's News Links
The quotes from Israeli historian Avi Shlaim above are the key to Tony Blair's ruin.

If you consider the influence that the philosopher Leo Strauss and his idea of "Noble Lies", has had on Neoconservatives things begin to fall alarmingly into place. The "Noble Lie" is a justification perfect for a secret elite of superior intellects, free to manipulate the lives of lesser mortals

"The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be like throwing pearls before swine. In contrast to modern political thinkers, the ancients denied that there is any natural right to liberty. Human beings are born neither free nor equal. The natural human condition, they held, is not one of freedom, but of subordination – and in Strauss’s estimation they were right in thinking so." Dr. Shadia Drury, author of "Leo Strauss and the American Right"

"Part of the charm of the regime-change argument (from the point of view of its supporters) is that it depends on premises and objectives that cannot, at least by the administration, be publicly avowed. Since Paul Wolfowitz is from the intellectual school of Leo Strauss—and appears in fictional guise as such in Saul Bellow's novel Ravelstein—one may even suppose that he enjoys this arcane and occluded aspect of the debate." Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Nov. 7, 2002

The harshest truth in world politics today is that the Israeli right, bereft and orphaned without Ariel Sharon, has always conceived of America and its power simply as a "golem", a word that has several meanings, but which in this case would take the meaning given here:

"Often in Ashkenazi Hasidic lore, the golem would come to life and serve his creators by doing tasks assigned to him. The most well-known story of the golem is connected to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague (1513-1609). It was said that he created a golem out of clay to protect the Jewish community from Blood Libel and to help out doing physical labor, since golems are very strong.(...) Sometimes, someone who is large but intellectually slow is called a golem." - The Jewish Virtual Library

In fact the war was a success, a shattered, divided and chaotic Middle East incapable of uniting against Israel was its object. For those who designed and pushed for the war, it was only "lost" when Ariel Sharon went into coma. Sharon was the only sorcerer who could have navigated in a shattered Middle East, the "sorcerer's apprentices" are lost in the wreckage. Blair's career is just another log on the fire. DS

Avi Shlaim: It is not only God that will be Blair's judge over Iraq - The Guardian
Abstract: Blair came to office with no experience of, and virtually no interest in, foreign affairs, and ended by taking this country to war five times. Blair boasts that his foreign policy was guided by the doctrine of liberal interventionism. But the war in Iraq is the antithesis of liberal intervention. It is an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war, a war undertaken on a false prospectus and without sanction from the UN. Blair's entire record in the Middle East is one of catastrophic failure. He used to portray Britain as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. By siding with America against Europe on Iraq, however, he helped to destroy the bridge.(...) Blair failed to understand that America's really special relationship is with Israel, not Britain. Every time that George Bush had to choose between Blair and Ariel Sharon, he chose the latter. Blair's special relationship with Bush was a one-way street: Blair made all the concessions and got nothing tangible in return.(...) True, Blair was the driving force behind the "road map" that envisaged the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But Sharon wrecked the road map. In return for the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon exacted a written American agreement to Israel's retention of the major settlement blocs on the West Bank. Blair publicly endorsed the nefarious Sharon-Bush pact. This was the most egregious British betrayal of the Palestinians since the Balfour declaration of 1917. Blair and Bush have also betrayed the Iraqi people. To begin with, there was much brave rhetoric about bringing democracy to Iraq and turning it into a model for the rest of the Arab world. But the rhetoric was empty. The neoconservatives who drove American policy were interested in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and in nothing else.(...) Blair has the audacity to say that God will be his judge over the Iraq war. This is a curious attitude for a democratic politician to adopt. History will surely pass a harsh judgment on Blair. He has the worst record on the Middle East of any British prime minister in the past century, infinitely worse than that of Anthony Eden, who at least had the decency to accept responsibility for the Suez debacle. READ IT ALL