Category: Alternet

Alternet

A Bush Plan For Mideast Disaster

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President George W. Bush’s speech on Monday actually represents a setback for Middle East peace.

On the one hand, it is reassuring that, after thirty years of rejecting the international consensus that peace requires the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel, an American president now formally recognizes that need. The bad news is that President Bush is simply perpetuating the unfair assumption that while Israel’s right to exist is a given, Palestine’s right to exist — even as a mini-state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip — is conditional. This comes despite the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has at least as much blood on his hands as does Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. Indeed, far more Palestinian civilians have died at the hands of Israeli occupation forces than have Israeli civilians died from terrorist attacks.

Furthermore, despite Arafat’s many faults, the Palestinian leader’s positions on the outstanding issues of the peace process — the extent of the Israeli withdrawal, the fate of the settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the right of return for refugees — are far more moderate and far more consistent with international law and UN Security Council resolutions than are the positions of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Despite that, President Bush insists that it is the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who must have new leadership in order for the peace process to move forward.

The current administration’s distorted priorities could not have been more apparent than in the fact that, in the course of his speech, the president mentioned terrorism eighteen times but did not mention human rights or international law even once. Nor did he mention the peace plan of Saudi Prince Abdullah — endorsed by the Palestinian Authority and every single Arab government — which offered Israel security guarantees and full normal relations in return for withdrawal from the occupied territories seized in the 1967 war. This is largely a reiteration of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, long considered to be the basis for Middle East peace. While President Bush mentioned these resolutions briefly in his speech, he failed to challenge Israel’s false claim that it does not actually require them to withdraw from virtually all of the Arab lands they conquered 34 years ago.

The Palestinians are only insisting on control of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, which is just 22 percent of Palestine. They have already recognized Israeli control of the remaining 78 percent. However, not only did President Bush fail to demand a total withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces, he called only for a freeze on additional Israeli settlements, when international law — reiterated in UN Security Council resolutions 446 and 465 — requires Israel to abandon the existing settlements as well.

The fact is that, as the occupying power, the onus for resolving the conflict rests upon Israel, not the Palestinians. Just as occupation and repression can never justify terrorism, neither can terrorism justify occupation and repression.

The Palestinians have such a strong case, in fact, the Bush Administration has chosen to focus instead upon their weakest link: their corrupt and inept leadership and the terrorist reaction to the occupation.

While many if not most Palestinians would love to see Arafat go, President Bush’s insistence that the United States has the right to say who the Palestinians choose as their leaders will likely breed enormous resentment. Indeed, Arafat — in his desperate attempt to hold on to power — can now use this American pressure as an excuse to label any reformist effort, even those led by sincere nationalists, as a form of collaboration with Israel and a tool of Western imperialism.

It is remarkable how President Bush insists on democratic governance and an end to violence and corruption as a prerequisite for Palestinian independence when his administration, as well as administrations before him, have strongly supported a series of violent, corrupt and autocratic regimes throughout the Middle East and beyond.

How can anyone take seriously his demand that the Palestinians create a political system based upon “tolerance and liberty” when President Bush arms and supports misogynist family dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, not to mention Israeli occupation forces that have engaged in brutal repression against Palestinian civilians?

It should be apparent that Bush’s criticisms of Arafat’s regime, however valid, are not the reason for denying the Palestinians their right to self-determination. They are simply the excuse.

http://www.alternet.org/story/13456/a_bush_plan_for_mideast_disaster/?page=entire

Aiding the War Effort

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The violence of the past year and a half between Israelis and Palestinians has left more than 2,000 people dead, torpedoed the peace process, and turned the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into battlefields.

As the U.S. reconsiders its role in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace, the prospects for a final settlement that recognizes the security needs of Israel and the legitimate political rights of Palestinians seem worse than ever. The Bush administration has abandoned the ambitious approach of its predecessor by emphasizing “assistance” over “insistence.”

Unfortunately, rather than focusing on the issues that have derailed the peace process, American assistance is emerging as a disjointed policy that urges a peaceful resolution to the conflict while boosting military aid to Israel. This military aid has been used in the widespread killings of civilians, destroyed large sections of the infrastructure in Palestinian society, and hardened Arab attitudes toward Israel.

The increases in military aid grow out of a central pillar of U.S. policy in the Middle East: strengthening America’s “strategic cooperation” with Israel.

This cooperation currently centers on two categories of U.S. military-related assistance to Israel: Economic Support Funds (ESF) and Foreign Military Financing (FMF). The larger of these two, FMF, is intended to help Israel finance its acquisition of U.S. military equipment, services, and training. FMF is scheduled to increase by $60 million each year, for a total of $2.04 billion in FY2002, as part of an ongoing plan to phase out ESF support by 2008.

Previous discussions about Israel’s security needs following peace agreements with Syria and the Palestinians and a withdrawal from the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip foresee an additional $35 billion of U.S. military assistance, raising the potential total to more than $7 billion per year over the next seven years. This is roughly the same amount currently spent by all of the former Soviet republics combined. Such an enormous increase is based on the confusing assumption that peace agreements with once-hostile neighbors somehow make Israel less secure and require a greatly expanded Israeli military.

Already the strongest military power in the region and the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, Israel does not need additional military assistance. It has one of the most sophisticated, well-equipped, and best-trained armies in the world, and its armed forces are growing faster than those of its neighbors, whose military expenditures decreased during the 1990s. Israel’s annual military expenditures are consistently two to three times as high as those of other countries involved in previous Arab-Israeli wars combined, and Israel leads the region in the number of heavy weapons holdings, armored infantry vehicles, airplanes, and heavy tanks. Israel outpaces Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon in every major category of arms spending.

A careful review of FMF assistance reveals that this program has actually hindered the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, made the Middle East more volatile, and undermined U.S. regional interests.

If the purpose of the FMF program is to improve Israel’s security, the U.S. should reverse its increasing emphasis on military assistance and replace outdated, one-dimensional ideas about Israel’s security with a more extensive definition. Taking into account important nonmilitary aspects of Israel’s security would enable the U.S. to complement its current policy with a variety of alternative strategies designed to identify and address the causes of conflict and create conditions for a sustainable peace.

The primary short-term threat to Israeli security stems from suicide bombers based in Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This can best be addressed by improved surveillance and interdiction and, more fundamentally, by ending Israel’s occupation, which has brought enormous human suffering while creating extremists willing to wreak carnage on Israeli civilians. Little of the U.S. security assistance helps protect Israelis from such attacks and, by providing the military hardware for an increasingly repressive occupation, results in the backlash that has manifested itself in the rise of extremist groups committed to terrorism.

The longer-term threat to Israel comes from sophisticated weaponry procured by Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf region, which are the only military systems that come close to challenging Israeli military superiority. Most of these weapons also come from the United States, however, so this threat can best be neutralized not by providing more arms to this overly militarized region, but through arms control. Indeed, Israel announced its support for a moratorium on arms exports to the Middle East in 1991, but the U.S. rejected it, raising serious questions as to whether the U.S. really has Israel’s best interests in mind.

Problems with Current U.S. Policy

The violence that erupted in September 2000 highlighted some important points about Israel’s security.

First, the most serious challenge for Israel has not been protecting its existence from hostile neighbors but rather pursuing an increasingly repressive military occupation that has created international diplomatic isolation as well as terrorist attacks.

Second, while armed attacks against Israeli occupation forces and settlers in the occupied territories, suicide bombing attacks against civilians inside Israel, and widespread condemnation by Arab governments have heightened Israeli citizens’ sense of vulnerability, Israel’s neighbors have not seriously threatened Israeli territory.

Finally, Israel’s clear military advantage has not made Israelis feel secure on a personal, individual level.

This paradox of personal insecurity in the face of overpowering military strength stems from an important distinction within Israeli security that Washington’s FMF assistance program to Israel does not address.

Israeli security has two levels: the macro, or national, level and the micro, or personal, level. The state of Israel is extremely secure in this first sense. Since its declaration of statehood and overwhelming military victory in 1948, Israel has not been attacked militarily within its internationally recognized borders. Peace agreements with Egypt — by far its most powerful adversary — in 1978 and with Jordan — with which it shares its longest border — in 1994 have inordinately improved its security. Military spending by Syria has declined dramatically, Lebanese armed forces have never been much of a threat and Iraq’s military has been decimated as a result of the Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions regime. In addition, cooperation with regional powers, such as Turkey, and decades of U.S. military assistance have combined to create a secure Israel.

At the same time, Israeli citizens continue to be the target of terrorist attacks and violent uprisings. Billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance to Israel are spent each year addressing the wrong type of security. What’s worse, FMF assistance has undermined personal security in Israel by diluting the incentives for seeking peace and by emboldening Israel to avoid making the concessions necessary for peace. This personal security will elude Israelis until the underlying causes of the conflict and the current uprising are addressed.

The current violence grows out of Palestinian frustrations with the peace process. During years of waiting for promised benefits, Palestinians have seen their standard of living steadily decline. In the seven years between the signing of the Oslo Accords and the start of the uprising in September 2000, Israeli policies—including border controls, retention of Palestinian funds, and restrictions on trade, investment, and access to water resources—resulted in growing trade and budget deficits for the Palestinians. Unemployment was hovering at 50 percent, poverty rates increased, health standards deteriorated, and any sense of opportunity among Palestinian youth began to fade.

The anger and despair that ignited the 2000 uprising and the current wave of suicide bombings stems from these policies and their effect on daily Palestinian life. The Spring 2002 re-occupation of Palestinian cities and widespread killings by Israeli forces using American armaments, detention and maltreatment of unarmed civilians, and the wanton destruction of economic and social infrastructure have only increased the Palestinian desire for revenge. This has also strengthened popular support for extremist groups like Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, resulting in less security for Israelis.

For years, most Palestinians have viewed a negotiated peace as the clearest route to achieving their aspirations for an independent state. While they waited for the peace process to produce this result, the Israeli government dramatically expanded its illegal settlements, Jewish — only highways, and related infrastructure in order to establish permanent control over large areas of Palestinian territory. These policies were pursued in large part to make a contiguous viable Palestinian state on the West Bank impossible and were in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a series United Nations Security Council resolutions. This was possible because of the large-scale financial, military, and diplomatic support for Israel by the United States.

As a result, many Palestinians now question the wisdom of pursuing a peace framed and sponsored by the United States. Many Palestinians see negotiation as empty promises and have begun seeking other means — some violent — of obtaining a homeland. As a result, a sense of insecurity grows within the Israeli population, fostered by the very policies that the U.S. and Israel pursue in the name of promoting Israeli security.

In addition to weakening U.S. credibility as a neutral mediator, massive increases in military assistance to Israel undermine U.S. attempts to limit the spread of weapons of mass destruction in the region. When Jordan downsized its military and proposed linking further military cutbacks in the region to debt reduction in the early 90s, for example, the U.S. resisted the suggestion and continued shipping arms to Israel at record levels. Following the 1994 peace deal between Jordan and Israel, other Arab states cited Jordan’s relative military weakness as the major reason for its inability to extract more concessions from Israel. The lesson was clear: The American-Israeli military relationship makes unilateral disarmament in the Middle East fruitless, even counterproductive.

Even as Washington cites Iraq’s potential possession of weapons of mass destruction and its failure to adhere to UN resolutions to justify its severe economic sanctions on the Iraqi population and its threats to invade the country, it continues to increase military aid to Israel, a nuclear power that remains in violation of scores of UN resolutions. In fact, states like Iran, Iraq, and Syria view their own efforts to develop and acquire chemical and biological weapons as a counterbalance to Israeli weapons acquisitions.

Toward a New Foreign Policy

The U.S. must recognize that Israeli security and Palestinian rights are not mutually exclusive, but mutually dependent. Just as the Palestinians will not be granted their rights until Israel’s legitimate security needs are recognized, Israel will not be secure until the Palestinians are granted their legitimate rights.

The U.S. should maintain its moral and strategic commitment to Israel to ensure its survival and its legitimate strategic interests in defending its internationally recognized borders. At the same time, however, the U.S. must also be willing to apply pressure whenever the Israeli government refuses to make the necessary compromises for peace, which requires withdrawal from the occupied territories, removing colonists from the illegal settlements, sharing Jerusalem, and pursuing a just resolution for Palestinian refugees. This would require an immediate suspension of all military assistance to Israel as long as the Israeli government continues to engage in violations of international human rights standards and international law.

Such a position not only would be morally right and would be in Israel’s own security interest, but it would also end the Bush administration’s ongoing violation of the Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids security assistance to any government that “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” without a waiver [22 U.S.C. Secs. 2034, 2151n].

Suspension of military aid to Israel must be part of a comprehensive effort at regional arms control, including a suspension of U.S. military aid to other Middle Eastern governments, virtually all of which engage in a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations.

Despite the threat and reality of suicide bombings, Israelis are relatively secure within their country’s internationally recognized borders compared to the soldiers and settlers in occupied Palestinian territories seized by Israel in the 1967 War. Settlements and roads in these areas—reserved for Jews only—not only create an apartheid-like situation, but also make it extremely difficult for Israeli forces to defend against a hostile population angry that foreign occupiers have confiscated what is often its best land. Israel would be far more secure defending a clearly defined and internationally recognized border than this network of illegal outposts within Palestinian territory. Israel’s official borders run for about 500 miles, whereas the demarcation lines between Israeli and Palestinian controlled areas prior to the most recent fighting were closer to 2,000 miles.

It is not surprising, then, that far more Israelis have died in the occupied territories than within Israel itself. Similarly, Israel utilizes far more of its soldiers outside the country maintaining its occupation against the Palestinians than it does defending the country’s borders or maintaining internal security. As reiterated in the recent Arab summit in Beirut, an Israeli withdrawal to within its internationally recognized borders would result in the security guarantees and fully normalized relations with Arab states Israel has long sought. This would put both Israel and its neighbors into compliance with UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, long considered to be the basis for Arab-Israeli peace. While this would not satisfy some Islamic extremists, an end to the occupation would dramatically reduce their following and simultaneously increase the ability and willingness of the Palestinian leadership to crack down on potential terrorists.

A more comprehensive definition of Israel’s security would create greater flexibility in the FMF assistance program, allowing the U.S. to address the personal insecurity of Israelis. Earmarking the ongoing $60 million annual increase for desalination and waste water recycling projects would reduce Israel’s reliance on Palestinian water resources, remove an incentive for maintaining the illegal occupation, and improve Palestinian economic prospects. Other options for applying the assistance include financing joint projects on a regional energy grid or natural gas pipelines, coordinating ecological management strategies, promoting international trade and tourism, and advancing efforts to develop cooperative economic zones along national borders. Tying the region together economically creates collective incentives to promote peace while highlighting the rewards of international cooperation to Arabs and Israelis alike. In this way, U.S. security assistance could bolster Israeli security without increasing military transfers or threatening Israel’s neighbors. Such a broader vision of security is necessary if the U.S. is truly interested in promoting peace and stability for Israel and the Middle East.

http://www.alternet.org/story/13101/aiding_the_war_effort/?page=entire

Congress Attacks Human Rights

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On Thursday, both the House of Representative and the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed resolutions defending the policies of right-wing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in the occupied territories. Human rights activists are alarmed, both at the strong Congressional support for a repressive military occupation as well as the fact that the resolutions are being widely interpreted as an attack on the credibility of Amnesty International and other human rights groups.

Last month, Amnesty International published a detailed and well-documented report on the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, noting how “the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] acted as though the main aim was to punish all Palestinians. Actions were taken by the IDF which had no clear or obvious military necessity.” The report goes on to document unlawful killings, destruction of civilian property, arbitrary detention, torture, assaults on medical personnel and journalists, and random shooting at houses and people in the streets.

By contrast, the House resolution, passed by a 352-21 margin, claims “Israel’s military operations are an effort to defend itself . . . and are aimed only at dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.”

This not only puts the House of Representatives in direct contradiction of reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, but of Israeli peace and human rights groups like B’Tselem, Gush Shalom and Yesh G’vul. These Israeli organizations, which have many IDF reservists in their ranks, have reported that the apparent goal of the Israeli offensive was to dismantle much of the civilian infrastructure of Palestinian society. The Israeli and international news media have graphically shown the wanton destruction of homes, offices, schools and utilities with no connection whatsoever with any “terrorist infrastructure.”

It is perhaps not surprising that the more harshly-worded House resolution, sponsored by Assistant Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was backed by virtually the entire Republican Right. Yet the chief co-sponsor of the resolution was none other than Tom Lantos, the liberal California Democrat who chairs the Human Rights Caucus. Other prominent liberals supporting the resolution included Nancy Pelosi, Robert Matsui, Maxine Waters, Henry Waxman, Mark Udall, John Lewis, Lane Evans, Barney Frank, Edward Markey, Major Owens, David Price and Patrick Kennedy, among others.

That so many supposedly progressive voices in the House of Representatives would take the word of Tom DeLay over that of Amnesty International is indicative of how little regard there is in Congress for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization.

The House resolution also called for an increase over the already more than two billion dollars of annual military aid sent to Israel and praised President George W. Bush for his policies.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate, in a 94-2 vote, passed a similar resolution, again referring to the assault on Palestinian towns and refugee camps as a case of Israel taking “necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas,” with every liberal Democrat voting in the affirmative.

Public opinion polls indicate that most Americans blame both sides for the violence, though the resolutions passed Thursday put the blame exclusively on the Palestinians. More strikingly, a Time/CNN poll revealed the 60 percent of Americans believe the United States should suspend some or all aid to Israel to force them to pull back from their offensive in the West Bank while only 1 percent believed U.S. aid should go up. Yet over 90 percent of the House of Representatives supports just such an increase in military aid.

The huge majorities in support of these resolutions can not be attributed to a need to secure the “Jewish vote” in this election year. American Jews are increasingly divided over the policies of Israel’s rightist prime minister and the vast majority of the resolutions’ Congressional backers are from states or districts with only tiny Jewish populations.

Similarly, most of these resolutions’ supporters are from safe enough seats so as not to need campaign contributions from the conservative political action committees supportive of Ariel Sharon.

For most members of Congress, then, it is simply a reflection of their sincere ideological support for Israel’s occupation policies and their low regard for internationally-recognized human rights standards as well as the failure of the peace and human rights community to mobilize as effectively on the Middle East as they have on other areas of U.S. foreign policy.

With only 17 Democrats in the House and two Democrats in the Senate voting against the bill, perhaps the biggest winner is the Green Party, that has long argued that even on an issue as basic as human rights, there is no difference between the two major parties. Already, there are growing numbers of disaffected Democrats who are beginning to realize they can not support human rights and support the Democratic Party at the same time.

The biggest loser in Thursday’s votes is the struggling Israeli peace and human rights movement and their moderate Palestinian counterparts, whose defiance of their violent leaders and efforts towards reconciliation have once again been sabotaged by the U.S. Congress.

http://www.alternet.org/story/13041/congress_attacks_human_rights/?page=entire

A New Path to Peace

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The tragic events of September 11 have created unprecedented challenges for the peace movement, anti-interventionist forces, and other progressive activists. For the first time in the lives of most Americans, the U.S. has found itself under attack.

After more than fifty years of fabricated and exaggerated threats to national security put forward by the U.S. government, academia, and the media to justify military interventionism abroad, even many traditional critics of U.S. foreign policy now acknowledge that there does exist a very real threat to U.S. security. Indeed, there is little question that Osama Bin Laden’s ideology is apocalyptic and his methods are genocidal. Furthermore, his worldview is closer to that of the European fascists of the 1930s than of the progressive third world revolutionaries of the 1970s who inspired many progressives in the West.

A significant minority of Americans, however, seriously question the wisdom of the U.S. military response. Some of these dissidents come from the pacifist tradition, taking a principled position in opposition to all war. They support nonviolent alternatives and argue that violence necessarily begets more violence. Other opponents of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism come from the far left. They argue that — given the nature of the U.S. role in the world and the powerful special interests that possess an inordinate amount of influence on policymaking — any such military intervention is inherently imperialistic. Still others emphasize utilitarian arguments against the use of large-scale bombing and other blunt instruments of power when dealing with a decentralized network of underground terrorist cells, where more targeted police or commando operations might be more appropriate.

Part of the difficulty in building an antiwar movement has been the nature of the Bush administration’s military response thus far. On the one hand, few progressives would have objected to a limited and targeted paramilitary action under international auspices, or even bombing raids targeted exclusively at Al-Qaeda facilities and nearby antiaircraft batteries. On the other hand, massive attacks against a series of Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries with the concomitant large-scale civilian casualties would have created such a backlash that the self-defeating nature of the U.S. military response would have created a credible antiwar opposition. Instead, the U.S. response has been somewhere between the two: excessive enough to raise serious moral, legal, and political objections, but limited enough so that the immediate negative consequences are not readily apparent to most Americans. Indeed, despite the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden and destroy the Al-Qaeda network, U.S. military operations have at least partially crippled the operations of the terrorist group and succeeded in overthrowing what was perhaps the most brutal totalitarian regime on the planet. While U.S. military operations were not as quick or successful as many in the Bush administration hoped, dire predictions from the left that the United States would be dragged into a quagmire comparable to the Soviet experience of the 1980s also proved to be incorrect.

Yet there are still strong utilitarian arguments against war. Given that terrorism is an international problem, it needs international solutions. This means vigorously and collaboratively pursing diplomatic, investigative, and international police channels to identify, track down, arrest, and bring to justice members of terrorist cells responsible for these crimes. Precipitous and inappropriate military action makes many nations — particularly in the Middle East, whose support is needed to track down terrorists hiding within those countries’ borders — reluctant to cooperate in antiterrorism efforts.

The United States is good at dropping bombs, firing missiles, and other displays of military force. However, even Bush administration officials acknowledge that the most important aspects of the campaign against terrorism are non-military, including good intelligence on, interdiction of, and disruption of the financial networks which support terrorists, all of which goals require cooperation with other nations. Unfortunately, the apparent U.S. military victory in Afghanistan and threats to expand the war elsewhere is likely to make the far more important political struggle all the more difficult.

For years, progressive voices in this country called for the withdrawal of American troops from the Middle East, a more even-handed position between the Israelis and Palestinians, a cessation of support for repressive governments, an end to the punitive sanctions against the people of Iraq, and a halt to the massive arms shipments to that already overly militarized region. If those in power had heeded these demands, it would have likely prevented the rise of anti-American terrorism in the Middle East; thousands of Americans and others killed on September 11 would still be alive today. It is ironic, then, that the very militarists whose policies led to the current crisis have successfully manipulated the threat they helped create to their own political advantage while marginalizing the prophetic progressive voices who warned that such consequences might be forthcoming if such misguided policies continued.

Those supporting peace and seeking alternatives to military intervention must find a way out of this conundrum.

Short to Medium-term Strategies for the Peace Movement

The September 11 attacks have placed traditional critics of U.S. militarism and interventionism in a bind. In refusing to support military action, such critics can easily be portrayed as naively acquiescing to dangerous forces that have demonstrated both the willingness and the ability to do enormous harm to many thousands of innocent people in our own country.

As a result, many former peace activists — even while cautioning against the more large-scale military actions advocated by administration hawks — are, for the first time, endorsing at least some sort of military response. At the same time, there are still very real moral and legal questions regarding certain aspects of military action, even among non-pacifists. Furthermore, supporting military action feeds the very militarization of U.S. foreign policy that helped create the backlash so frighteningly manifested in the Al-Qaeda movement and other extremist activities.

Perhaps the greatest contribution progressives can make to the current situation in the short- to medium-term is exposing how the Bush administration is using the crisis to advance its right-wing ideological agenda. For example, no other country besides Taliban-ruled Afghanistan has been shown to have harbored or given any other kind of direct support to Al-Qaeda. However, there have been a series of threats by the Bush administration to extend the war to Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere, in an apparent desire to use counterterrorism as an excuse to punish regimes it doesn’t like and to extend American military power. Such attacks would create a widespread anti-American backlash in the region that would severely compromise the non-military but more crucial counterterrorism efforts on which the United States must concentrate at this stage. Those opposing further U.S. military intervention must emphasize that the struggle against terrorism is too important to be sabotaged by ideologues wishing to settle old scores.

Another example regards the enormous increase in military spending advocated by the Bush administration — with apparent support from leading congressional Democrats — that has been justified as necessary to fund the war on terrorism. However, the vast majority of the proposed spending is for weapons systems and other expenditures having nothing to do with counterterrorism; indeed, many were originally designed to counter Soviet weapons that no longer exist. Activists can point out that, at a time of national crisis where a singularity of purpose is required, the two major parties are taking advantage of the American people and their hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize the arms industry. For example, if the terrorist attacks of September 11 proved anything, it is the folly of the assertion that a nuclear missile defense can protect us. The use of missiles, bombers, and other heavy high-tech equipment may have been partially successful in Afghanistan, where there were some tangible, if limited, targets in the form of training camps for Al-Qaeda and other military installations belonging to the allied Taliban regime. However, such weapons will be of little use against the majority of Al-Qaeda that remains intact as a network of decentralized, underground cells. As a result, antiwar activists can point out that the emphasis on heavy high-tech weaponry in the proposed federal budget is based not on its need to protect Americans from terrorism but because such weaponry is extremely profitable for arms manufacturers.

From fiscal policy to civil liberties to trade issues to environmental concerns, the entire agenda of the political right is being advanced in the name of fighting terrorism. Indeed, many progressives barely had time to grieve the tragedies of September 11 before we had to start worrying about the frightening political implications of our government’s response. In addition to the threat of war, few progressives could doubt that there would soon be assaults on such areas as civil liberties, immigrant rights, saner budget priorities, human rights, international law, and arms control. Antiterrorism has become what anticommunism was during the cold war: the manipulation of an outside threat to pursue a right-wing agenda, including the suppression of legitimate dissent. Also as during the cold war, most prominent liberals have timidly accepted many of the assumptions and policies put forward by right-wing Republicans and thereby made thoughtful debate of the policies that resulted in this terrorist threat extremely difficult.

At the same time, few things make people angrier than being taken advantage of in time of genuine need. Progressives must acknowledge the reality of the terrorist threat and the necessity of a strong and effective response from our government, while at the same time exposing the perfidy of the Bush administration in cynically manipulating our genuine need for security for the sake of its rigid ideological constructs and its wealthy financial supporters.

Longer-term Strategies

In most previous cases of U.S. military intervention abroad, it was generally enough to simply demand the U.S. stay out. The current crisis, however, does require some credible alternatives to the Bush administration policy. Successful activism against war has to proceed from good policy prescriptions to introduce this shift. In previous campaigns regarding military intervention, antiwar forces have been mostly reacting to U.S. policy. To win this struggle, those desiring a more enlightened foreign policy must also be on the offensive.

Whatever the most appropriate U.S. response may be in the short term, the most important thing the United States can do to prevent future terrorism is to change its policies toward the Middle East. There can not be a successful peace movement without a movement to change U.S. Middle East policy. Such changes will certainly not satisfy the Bin Ladens and other extremists. A more rational Middle East policy, however, will seriously reduce their potential following and, by extension, their capacity to do damage. The United States should certainly not change any policy for the sake of appeasing terrorists. But progressives must push for policy changes that should be made anyway for moral or legal reasons that would simultaneously reduce the threat from terrorism. For example, it would be wrong to call for an end to the American commitment to Israel’s legitimate security needs in order to appease anti-Jewish terrorists. However, peace activists should demand an end to the unconditional U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israel’s rightist government and its occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — not only because it fuels the fires of anti-American extremism but also because it is wrong to support any government that violates basic principles of international law and human rights.

Building a U.S. Middle East policy based more on the promotion of human rights, international law, and sustainable development and less on arms transfers, support for occupation armies and dictatorial governments, air strikes, and punitive sanctions would make the United States much safer. It is, therefore, appealing to enlightened self-interest — consistent with the professed values with which most Americans identify — that can build a progressive alternative to current U.S. policy. Indeed, claims by President George W. Bush to the contrary, the United States has not become a target because of our freedom and democracy, but because U.S. Middle East policy is not about freedom and democracy. We are not hated because of our values, but because we have strayed from those values.

The emphasis on a largely military response to the threat of terrorism ignores the fact that it has been the dramatic militarization of the Middle East in recent decades, encouraged by successive U.S. administrations, that has helped create this violent anti-American backlash. Indeed, the more the U.S. has militarized the region, the less secure the American people have become. All the sophisticated weaponry, brave fighting men and women, and brilliant military leadership the United States may possess will do little good if there are hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East and beyond who hate us. Even the tiny percentage that may support Osama Bin Laden’s methods will be enough to maintain dangerous terrorist networks as long as his grievances resonate with the majority. Even should there be an initially successful outcome of the military response to Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, there will be new terrorists to take their places unless there is a critical examination of what has prompted the rise of such a fanatical movement.

There are those who argue that Osama Bin Laden’s political agenda should not be taken any more seriously than those of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, late 1960s cult leader Charles Manson, or any other mass murderer. Certainly anyone who would be willing to sacrifice thousands of innocent lives for any reason is clearly a pathological killer and is unlikely to be reasoned with or appeased through negotiations.

An important distinction should be made, however. Terrorist groups whose political grievances have little political appeal — such as the far left and far right terrorist groups which have periodically arisen in relatively open societies like those in Western Europe and the United States — can be suppressed relatively easily. By contrast, terrorist groups whose agendas reflect those of systematically oppressed populations — such as Palestinian Arabs, Sri Lankan Tamils, or Northern Ireland Catholics — are far more difficult to control without also addressing the underlying political grievances. Osama Bin Laden and his network may be more like the latter, only on a regional scale. Indeed, with the dramatic rise of radical Islamic movements worldwide and the growing Arab diaspora, the threat is on a global scale.

As most Muslims recognize, Osama Bin Laden is certainly not an authority on Islam. He is, however, a businessman who — like any good businessman — knows how to take a popular fear or desire and use it to sell a product: in this case, anti-American terrorism. Although very few Muslims support his ideology and tactics, the grievances expressed in his manifestoes — the ongoing U.S. military presence in the Gulf, the humanitarian consequences of the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq, U.S. support for the Israeli government, and U.S. support for autocratic Arab regimes — have widespread appeal in that part of the world. For the struggle against terrorism to be successful, the United States must redefine security from the current militarist paradigm to one that addresses the root causes. This is where a strong progressive movement must take the lead.

The so-called “terrorism experts,” like the “strategic analysts” of the cold war, are disproportionately right-wingers who have their own ideological agenda. The more narrow the focus on terrorism, the more it feeds the militarists. At the same time, simply pointing out the hypocrisy in U.S. counterterrorism policy (including U.S. support for terrorist groups over the years) is not enough. We must also offer solutions.

The Potential for Building a Movement

Support for U.S. military action is a mile wide and an inch deep. Given the nature of the threat, the vast majority of Americans believe that military action is necessary. Yet there is also a realization by many millions of Americans that Al-Qaeda was at least in part a result of a series of misguided U.S. policies over the years. Simply addressing the security aspects of terrorism, as U.S. policy currently does, is merely confronting the symptoms rather than the cause. The struggle against terrorism cannot be won until the U.S. also ceases its pursuit of policies that alienate such large segments of the international community, particularly in the Middle East and elsewhere in the third world.

The U.S. is a target of terrorists in large part due to our perceived arrogance, hypocrisy, and greed. Becoming a more responsible member of the international community will go a long way toward making the U.S. safer and ultimately stronger.

There was nothing karmic about the events of September 11. No country deserves to experience such a large-scale loss of innocent lives. Yet the willingness of Americans to recognize why some extremists might resort to such heinous acts is necessary if there is to be any hope of stopping it in the future. To raise these uncomfortable questions about U.S. foreign policy is difficult for many Americans, particularly in the aftermath of the attacks. However, doing so could not be more important or timely.

A widespread assumption is that concerned citizens must focus on electing those supportive of change if they are to change policy. While backing candidates with more enlightened views toward the U.S. role in the world certainly has its merits, history has shown that who is elected political leader is less important than what choices a well-mobilized citizenry gives those elected once they’re in office. Currently, if anything, the Democrats are somewhat to the right of the Republicans on some key Middle East policy issues. It will be hard to change the policies of the Bush administration if, for example, the majority of the Progressive Caucus and the Human Rights Caucus in the House of Representatives continue their current support for the status quo.

This can change, however. The history of U.S. foreign policy in recent decades has been shaped markedly as a result of popular demands by large numbers of people putting pressure on elected officials through congressional lobbying, legal protests, civil disobedience, and public education campaigns. The Democratic Party had a pro-Vietnam War platform and nominee from the incumbent war-making administration in 1968 only to be replaced by a strong antiwar platform and antiwar nominee in 1972. In the four years in between, there were massive antiwar mobilizations by hundreds of thousands in Washington, DC and elsewhere, as well as large-scale civil disobedience campaigns, widespread draft resistance, and other forms of opposition. Similarly, in 1980, Vice-President Walter Mondale and others in the Carter administration strongly opposed the call for a freeze in the research, testing, and development of new nuclear weapons systems; by the time he ran for president in 1984, however, Mondale was an outspoken supporter of the Freeze campaign. In the intervening four years, the Nuclear Freeze Campaign and disarmament activists mobilized grass roots initiatives across the country, including the massive 1982 protest in New York City. In 1978, Andrew Young — the African-American clergyman and former aide to Martin Luther King who served as Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations — vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for sanctions against South Africa. By 1986, the Republican-dominated Senate joined the Democratic-led House of Representatives to override a presidential veto and to impose sanctions on the apartheid state — which was instrumental in the downfall of white minority rule.

Massive protests against the U.S. military role in Central America in the 1980s forced the U.S. government to accept the Arias peace plan, which brought an end to the bloody civil wars and led to more democratic governance in a region then-dominated by dictatorial regimes. In the 1990s, a popular movement supporting self-determination for East Timor forced a reluctant Clinton administration to cut off military aid to Indonesia, playing a key role in forcing a withdrawal by Indonesian occupation forces and eventual independence.

The key to a successful peace movement in our current situation will be to build a popular movement to change Middle East policy comparable to these successful precedents. So far, such a movement has been relatively small compared to the others, which is ironic given what is at stake. As with other movements, there are elements of the far-left and others that adhere to rigid ideological models based upon little empirical information about the conflict in question, often greatly simplifying complex historical dynamics and sometimes even buying into bizarre conspiracy theories. On some Middle East issues, certain elements within the far right can infiltrate various campaigns; for example, there is often a risk of anti-Semites becoming involved in campaigns challenging U.S. policy supporting the Israeli government. However, the biggest problem has been the timidity of the peace and human rights movements to become more involved. For example, it is very unlikely that the dozens of prominent liberals who support the bombing of Iraq or military aid to Ariel Sharon’s government in Israel would do so if faced with the kind of mobilization that took place opposing U.S. policy in Central America.

Indeed, the failure of pro-peace and anti-interventionist forces to address the Middle East with the same kind of moral fervor demonstrated in campaigns regarding Southeast Asia, Central America, and Southern Africa is what has allowed the U.S. government to pursue policies that have resulted in the current crisis.

There are many opportunities for a movement for peace and justice in the Middle East to build upon existing popular movements. Those challenging the neoliberal model of globalization can observe how the economic stratification and declining access to basic needs by the Middle East’s poor majority, resulting from policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization have contributed to the rise of extremist groups. Human rights campaigners can note the tendency of Islamic extremists to emerge in countries where open and nonviolent political expression is suppressed. Peace activists can emphasize how the arms trade has contributed to the militarization of the region and the resulting propensity to violence.

Public opinion polls indicating popular support for U.S. Middle East policy does not mean that most Americans support that policy. It merely means that they support what they think that policy is. Many Americans actually believe their government’s rhetoric that the United States actually supports democracy, international law, demilitarization, economic development, and Israeli-Palestinian peace. The challenge for the American peace movement is to expose the real nature of U.S. policy. Once this is done, the popular support for such a movement will already be there to mobilize the kind of resistance that has forced a change toward a more ethical foreign policy in previous conflicts. The threat from terrorism has in certain ways made this more difficult, as so many Americans have become angry and defensive about critiques of U.S. policy in the face of such violence and rage from foreign extremists. In other ways, however, the very seriousness of the threat has opened people up to learn more about the Middle East, why so many people in that part of the world might hate us, and what might be in the real security interests of the nation.

The Chinese character of “crisis” is a compound word consisting of “danger” and “opportunity.” The dangers of the current situation are obvious. No less important are the opportunities now available for those who want to change the direction of United States policy in the Middle East and work for peace and justice.

http://www.alternet.org/story/12404/a_new_path_to_peace/?page=entire

10 Things to Know About the Middle East

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1. Who are the Arabs?

Arab peoples range from the Atlantic coast in northwest Africa to the Arabian peninsula and north to Syria. They are united by a common language and culture. Though the vast majority are Muslim, there are also sizable Christian Arab minorities in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Palestine. Originally the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, the Arabs spread their language and culture to the north and west with the expansion of Islam in the 7th century. There are also Arab minorities in the Sahel and parts of east Africa, as well as in Iran and Israel. The Arabs were responsible for great advances in mathematics, astronomy and other scientific disciplines, while Europe was still mired in the Dark Ages.

Though there is great diversity in skin pigmentation, spoken dialect and certain customs, there is a common identity that unites Arab people, which has sometimes been reflected in pan-Arab nationalist movements. Despite substantial political and other differences, many Arabs share a sense that they are one nation, which has been artificially divided through the machinations of Western imperialism and which came to dominate the region with the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th century. There is also a growing Arab diaspora in Europe, North America, Latin America, West Africa and Australia.

2. Who are the Muslims?

The Islamic faith originated in the Arabian peninsula, based on what Muslims believe to be divine revelations by God to the prophet Mohammed. Muslims worship the same God as do Jews and Christians, and share many of the same prophets and ethical traditions, including respect for innocent life. Approximately 90 percent of Muslims are of the orthodox or Sunni tradition; most of the remainder are of the Shi’ite tradition, which dominate Iran but also has substantial numbers in Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and Lebanon. Sunni Islam is nonhierarchical in structure. There is not a tradition of separation between the faith and state institutions as there is in the West, though there is enormous diversity in various Islamic legal traditions and the degree to which governments of predominately Muslim countries rely on religious bases for their rule.

Political movements based on Islam have ranged from left to right, from nonviolent to violent, from tolerant to chauvinistic. Generally, the more moderate Islamic movements have developed in countries where there is a degree of political pluralism in which they could operate openly. There is a strong tradition of social justice in Islam, which has often led to conflicts with regimes that are seen to be unjust or unethical. The more radical movements have tended to arise in countries that have suffered great social dislocation due to war or inappropriate economic policies and/or are under autocratic rule.

Most of the world’s Muslims are not Arabs. The world’s largest Muslim country, for example, is Indonesia. Other important non-Arab Muslim countries include Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia, as well as Nigeria and several other black African states. Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world and scores of countries have substantial Muslim minorities. There are approximately five million Muslims in the United States.

3. Why is there so much violence and political instability in the Middle East?

For most of the past 500 years, the Middle East actually saw less violence and warfare and more political stability than Europe or most other regions of the world. It has only been in the last century that the region has seen such widespread conflict. The roots of the conflict are similar to those elsewhere in the Third World, and have to do with the legacy of colonialism, such as artificial political boundaries, autocratic regimes, militarization, economic inequality and economies based on the export of raw materials for finished goods. Indeed, the Middle East has more autocratic regimes, militarization, economic inequality and the greatest ratio of exports to domestic consumption than any region in the world.

At the crossroads of three continents and sitting on much of the world’s oil reserves, the region has been subjected to repeated interventions and conquests by outside powers, resulting in a high level of xenophobia and suspicion regarding the intentions of Western powers going back as far as the Crusades. There is nothing in Arab or Islamic culture that promotes violence or discord; indeed, there is a strong cultural preference for stability, order and respect for authority. However, adherence to authority is based on a kind of social contract that assumes a level of justice which — if broken by the ruler — gives the people a right to challenge it. The word jihad, often translated as “holy war,” actually means “holy struggle,” which can sometimes mean an armed struggle (qital), but also can mean nonviolent action and political work within the established system. Jihad also can mean a struggle for the moral good of the Muslim community, or even a personal spiritual struggle.

Terrorism is not primarily a Middle Eastern phenomenon. In terms of civilian lives lost, Africa has experienced far more terrorism in recent decades than has the Middle East. Similarly, far more suicide bombings in recent years have come from Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka than from Muslim Arabs in the Middle East. There is also a little-known but impressive tradition of nonviolent resistance and participatory democracy in some Middle Eastern countries.

4. Why has the Middle East been the focus of U.S. concern about international terrorism?

There has been a long history of terrorism — generally defined as violence by irregular forces against civilian targets — in the Middle East. During Israel’s independence struggle in the 1940s, Israeli terrorists killed hundreds of Palestinian and British civilians; two of the most notorious terrorist leaders of that period — Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir — later became Israeli prime ministers whose governments received strong financial, diplomatic and military support from the United States. Algeria’s independence struggle from France in the 1950s included widespread terrorist attacks against French colonists. Palestine’s ongoing struggle for independence has also included widespread terrorism against Israeli civilians, during the 1970s through some of the armed militias of the Palestine Liberation Organization and, more recently, through radical underground Islamic groups. Terrorism has also played a role in Algeria’s current civil strife, in Lebanon’s civil war and foreign occupations during the 1980s, and for many years in the Kurdish struggle for independence. Some Middle Eastern governments — notably Libya, Syria, Sudan, Iraq and Iran — have in the past had close links with terrorist organizations. In more recent years, the Al Qaeda movement — a decentralized network of terrorist cells supported by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden — has become the major terrorist threat, and is widely believed to be responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Bin Laden himself has been given sanctuary in Afghanistan, though his personal fortune and widespread network of supporters have allowed him to be independent on direct financial or logistical support from any government.

The vast majority of the people in the Middle East deplore terrorism, yet point out that violence against civilians by governments has generally surpassed that of terrorists. For example, the Israelis have killed far more Arab civilians over the decades through using U.S.-supplied equipment and ordinance than have Arab terrorists killed Israeli civilians. Similarly, the U.S.-supplied Turkish armed forces have killed far more Kurdish civilians than have such radical Kurdish groups like the PKK (the Kurdish acronym for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party). Also, in the eyes of many Middle Easterners, U.S. support for terrorist groups like the Nicaraguan contras and various right-wing Cuban exile organizations in recent decades, as well as U.S. air strikes and the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq in more recent years, have made the U.S. an unlikely leader in the war against terrorism

5. What kind of political systems and alliances exist in the Middle East?

There are a variety of political systems in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Morocco and Jordan are all conservative monarchies (in approximate order of absolute rule). Iraq, Syria and Libya are left-leaning dictatorships, with Iraq being one of the most totalitarian societies in the world. Egypt and Tunisia are conservative autocratic republics. Iran is an Islamic republic with an uneven trend in recent years towards greater political openness. Sudan and Algeria are under military rulers facing major insurrections.

Lebanon, Turkey and Yemen are republics with repressive aspects but some degree of political pluralism. The only Middle Eastern country with a strong tradition of parliamentary democracy is Israel, though the benefits of this political freedom is largely restricted to its Jewish citizens (the Palestinian Arab minority is generally treated as second-class citizens and Palestinians in the occupied territories are subjected to military rule and human rights abuses). The largely autocratic Palestinian Authority has been granted limited autonomy in a series of non-contiguous enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza Strip surrounded by Israeli occupation forces.

All Arab states, including the Palestinian Authority, belong to the League of Arab States, which acts as a regional body similar to the Organization of African Union or the Organization of American States, which work together on issues of common concern. However, there are enormous political divisions within Arab countries and other Middle Eastern states. Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, closely aligned with the West and hopes to eventually become part of the European Union. The six conservative monarchies of the Persian Gulf region have formed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), from where they pursue joint strategic and economic interests and promote close ties with the West, particularly Great Britain (which dominated the smaller sheikdoms in the late 19th and early 20th century) and, more recently, the United States.

Often a country’s alliances are not a reflection of its internal politics. For example, Saudi Arabia is often referred in the U.S. media as a “moderate” Arab state, though it is the most oppressive fundamentalist theocracy in the world today outside of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan; “moderate,” in this case, simply means that it has close strategic and economic relations with the United States.

Jordan and Egypt are pro-Western, but have been willing to challenge U.S. policy on occasion. Israel identifies most strongly with the West: most of its leaders are European-born or have been of European heritage, and it has diplomatic relations with only a handful of Middle Eastern countries. Iran alienated most of its neighbors with its threat to expand its brand of revolutionary Islam to Arab world, though its increasingly moderate orientation in recent years has led to some cautious rapprochement. Syria, a former Soviet ally, has been cautiously reaching out to more conservative Arab governments and with the West; it currently exerts enormous political influence over Lebanon. Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Muammar Qaddafi and Sudan under their military junta remain isolated from most of other Middle Eastern countries due to a series of provocative policies, though many of these same countries oppose the punitive sanctions and air strikes the United States has inflicted against these countries in recent years.

6. What is the impact of oil in the Middle East?

The major oil producers of the Middle East include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Algeria. Egypt, Syria, Oman and Yemen have smaller reserves. Most of the major oil producers of the Middle East are part of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. (Non-Middle Eastern OPEC members include Indonesia, Venezuela, Nigeria and other countries.) Much of the world’s oil wealth exists along the Persian Gulf, with particularly large reserves in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. About one-quarter of U.S. oil imports come from the Persian Gulf region; the Gulf supplies European states and Japan with an even higher percentage of those countries’ energy needs. The imposition of higher fuel efficiency standards and other conservation measures, along with the increased use of renewable energy resources for which technologies are already available, could eliminate U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil in a relatively short period of time.

The Arab members of OPEC instigated a boycott against the United States in the fall of 1973 in protest of U.S. support for Israel during the October Arab-Israeli war, creating the first in a series of energy shortages. The cartel has had periods of high and low costs for oil, resulting in great economic instability. Most governments have historically used their oil wealth to promote social welfare, particularly countries like Algeria, Libya and Iraq, which professed to a more socialist orientation. Yet all countries have squandered their wealth for arms purchases and prestige projects. In general, the influx of petrodollars has created enormous economic inequality both within oil-producing states and between oil-rich and oil-poor states as well as widespread corruption and questionable economic priorities.

7. What is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially over land, with two peoples claiming historic rights to the geographic Palestine, a small country in the eastern Mediterranean about the size of New Jersey. The creation of modern Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of the goal of the Jewish nationalist movement, known as Zionism, as large numbers of Jews migrated to their faith’s ancestral homeland from Europe, North Africa and elsewhere throughout the 20th century. They came into conflict with the indigenous Palestinian Arab population, which also was struggling for independence. The 1947 partition plan, which divided the country approximately in half, resulted in a war that ended with Israel seizing control of 78 percent of the territory within a year. Most of the Palestinian population became refugees, in some cases through fleeing the fighting and in other cases through being forcibly expelled. The remaining Palestinian areas — the West Bank and Gaza Strip — came under control of the neighboring Arab states of Jordan and Egypt, though these areas were also seized by Israel in the 1967 war.

Israel has been colonizing parts of these occupied territories with Jewish settlers in violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council resolutions. Historically, both sides have failed to recognize the legitimacy of the others’ nationalist aspirations, though the Palestinian leadership finally formally recognized Israel in 1993. The peace process since then has been over the fate of the West Bank (including Arab East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, which is the remaining 22 percent of the Palestine, occupied by Israel since 1967. The United States plays the dual role of chief mediator of the conflict as well as the chief financial, military and diplomatic supporter of Israel. The Palestinians want their own independent state in these territories and to allow Palestinian refugees the right to return. Israel, backed by the United States, insists the Palestinians give up large swaths of the West Bank — including most of Arab East Jerusalem — to Israel and to accept the resettlement of most refugees into other Arab countries. Since September 2000, there has been widespread rioting by Palestinians against the ongoing Israeli occupation as well as terrorist bombings within Israel by extremist Islamic groups. Israeli occupation forces, meanwhile, have engaged in widespread killings and other human rights abuses in the occupied territories.

Most Arabs feel a strong sense of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, though their governments have tended to manipulate their plight for their own political gain. Neighboring Arab states have fought several wars with Israel, though Egypt and Jordan now have peace agreements and full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. In addition to much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel still occupies a part of southwestern Syria known as the Golan Heights. The threats and hostility by Arab states towards Israel’s very existence has waned over the years. Full peace and diplomatic recognition would likely come following a full Israeli withdrawal from its occupied territories.

8. What has been the legacy of the Gulf War?

Virtually every Middle Eastern state opposed the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990, though they were badly divided on the appropriateness of the U.S.-led Gulf War that followed. Even among countries that supported the armed liberation of Kuwait, there was widespread opposition to the deliberate destruction by the United States of much of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure during the war. Even more controversial has been the enormous humanitarian consequences of the U.S.-led international sanctions against Iraq in place since the war, which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, from malnutrition and preventable diseases.

The periodic U.S. air strikes against Iraq also have been controversial, as has the ongoing U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. Since Iraq’s offensive military capability was largely destroyed during the Gulf War and during the subsequent inspections regime, many observers believe that U.S. fears about Iraq’s current military potential are exaggerated, particularly in light of the quiet U.S. support for Iraq during the 1980s when its military was at its peak. In many respects, the Gulf War led the oil-rich GCC states into closer identification with the United States and the West and less with their fellow Arabs, though there is still some distrust about U.S. motivations and policies in the Middle East.

9. How has the political situation in Afghanistan evolved and how is it connected to the Middle East?

Afghanistan, an impoverished landlocked mountainous country, has traditionally been identified more with Central and South Asia than with the Middle East. A 1978 coup by communist military officers resulted in a series of radical social reforms, which were imposed in an autocratic matter and which resulted in a popular rebellion by a number of armed Islamic movements. The Soviet Union installed a more compliant communist regime at the end of 1979, sending in tens of thousands of troops and instigating a major bombing campaign, resulting in large-scale civilian casualties and refugee flows. The war lasted for much of the next decade. The United States sent arms to the Islamic resistance, known as the mujahadin, largely through neighboring Pakistan, then under the rule of an ultra-conservative Islamic military dictatorship. Most of the U.S. aid went to the most radical of the eight different mujahadin factions on the belief that they would be least likely to reach a negotiated settlement with the Soviet-backed government and would therefore drag the Soviet forces down. Volunteers from throughout the Islamic world, including the young Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden, joined the struggle. The CIA trained many of these recruits, including bin Laden and many of his followers.

When the Soviets and Afghanistan’s communist government were defeated in 1992, a vicious and bloody civil war broke out between the various mujahadin factions, war lords and ethnic militias. Out of this chaos emerged the Taliban movement, led by young seminary students from the refugee camps in Pakistan who were educated in ultra-conservative Saudi-funded schools. The Taliban took over 85 percent of the country by 1996 and imposed long-awaited order and stability, but established a brutal totalitarian theocracy based on a virulently reactionary and misogynist interpretation of Islam. The Northern Alliance, consisting of the remnants of various factions from the civil war in the 1990s, control a small part of the northeast corner of the country.

10. How have most Middle Eastern governments reacted to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath?

Virtually every government and the vast majority of their populations reacted with the same horror and revulsion as did people in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Despite scenes shown repeatedly on U.S. television of some Palestinians celebrating the attacks, the vast majority of Palestinians also shared in the world’s condemnation. If the United States, in conjunction with local governments, limits its military response to commando-style operations against suspected terrorist cells, the U.S. should receive the cooperation and support of most Middle Eastern countries. If the response is more widespread, based more on retaliation than self-defense, and ends up killing large numbers of Muslim civilians, it could create a major anti-American reaction that would increase support for the terrorists and lessen the likelihood for the needed cooperation to break up the Al Qaeda network, which operates in several Middle Eastern countries.

While few Middle Easterners support bin Laden’s methods, the principal concerns expressed in his manifestoes — the U.S.’s wrongful support for Israel and for Arab dictatorships, the disruptive presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and the humanitarian impact of the sanctions on Iraq — are widely supported. Ultimately, a greater understanding of the Middle East and the concerns of its governments and peoples are necessary before the United States can feel secure from an angry backlash from the region.

10 Things to Know about U.S. Policy in the Middle East

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1. The United States has played a major role in the militarization of the region.

The Middle East is the destination of the majority of American arms exports, creating enormous profits for weapons manufacturers and contributing greatly to the militarization of this already overly-militarized region. Despite promises of restraint, U.S. arms transfers to the region have topped $60 billion since the Gulf War. Arms sales are an important component of building political alliances between the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries, particularly with the military leadership of recipient countries. There is a strategic benefit for the U.S. in having U.S.-manufactured systems on the ground in the event of a direct U.S. military intervention. Arms sales are also a means of supporting military industries faced with declining demand in Western countries.

To link arms transfers with a given country’s human rights record would lead to the probable loss of tens of billions of dollars in annual sales for American weapons manufacturers, which are among the most powerful special interest groups in Washington. This may help explain why the United States has ignored the fact that UN Security Council resolution 687, which the U.S. has cited as justification for its military responses to Iraq’s possible rearmament, also calls for region-wide disarmament efforts, something the United States has rejected.

The U.S. justifies the nearly $3 billion in annual military aid to Israel on the grounds of protecting that country from its Arab neighbors, even though the United States supplies 80 percent of the arms to these Arab states. The 1978 Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt was in many ways more like a tripartite military pact than a peace agreement in that it has resulted in more than $5 billion is annual U.S. arms transfers to those two countries. U.S. weapons have been used repeatedly in attacks against civilians by Israel, Turkey and other countries. It is not surprising that terrorist movements have arisen in a region where so many states maintain their power influence through force of arms.

2. The U.S. maintains an ongoing military presence in the Middle East.

The United States maintains an ongoing military presence in the Middle East, including longstanding military bases in Turkey, a strong naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and Arabian Sea, as well as large numbers of troops on the Arabian Peninsula since the Gulf War. Most Persian Gulf Arabs and their leaders felt threatened after Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait and were grateful for the strong U.S. leadership in the 1991 war against Saddam Hussein’s regime and for UN resolutions designed to curb Iraq’s capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, there is an enormous amount of cynicism regarding U.S. motives in waging that war. Gulf Arabs, and even some of their rulers, cannot shake the sense that the war was not fought for international law, self-determination and human rights, as the senior Bush administration claimed, but rather to protect U.S. access to oil and to enable the U.S. to gain a strategic toehold in the region.

The ongoing U.S. air strikes against Iraq have not garnered much support from the international community, including Iraq’s neighbors, who would presumably be most threatened by an Iraqi capability of producing weapons of mass destruction. In light of Washington’s tolerance — and even quiet support — of Iraq’s powerful military machine in the 1980s, the United States’ exaggerated claims of an imminent Iraqi military threat in 1998, after Iraq’s military infrastructure was largely destroyed in the Gulf War, simply lack credibility. Nor have such recent air strikes eliminated or reduced the country’s capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, particularly the most plausible threat of biological weapons.

Furthermore, only the United Nations Security Council has the prerogative to authorize military responses to violations of its resolutions; no single member state can do so unilaterally without explicit permission. Many Arabs object to the U.S. policy of opposing efforts by Arabs states to produce weapons of mass destruction, while tolerating Israel’s sizable nuclear arsenal and bringing U.S. nuclear weapons into Middle Eastern waters as well as rejecting calls for the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the region.

In a part of the world which has been repeatedly conquered by outside powers of the centuries, this ongoing U.S. military presence has created an increasing amount of resentment. Indeed, the stronger the U.S. military role has become in the region in recent decades, the less safe U.S. interests have become.

3. There has been an enormous humanitarian toll resulting from U.S. policy toward Iraq.

Iraq still has not recovered from the 1991 war, during which it was on the receiving end of the heaviest bombing in world history, destroying much of the country’s civilian infrastructure. The U.S. has insisted on maintaining strict sanctions against Iraq to force compliance with international demands to dismantle any capability of producing weapons of mass destruction. In addition, the U.S. hopes that such sanctions will lead to the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, Washington’s policy of enforcing strict sanctions against Iraq appears to have had the ironic effect of strengthening Saddam’s regime. With as many as 5,000 people, mostly children, dying from malnutrition and preventable diseases every month as a result of the sanctions, the humanitarian crisis has led to worldwide demands — even from some of Iraq’s historic enemies — to relax the sanctions. Furthermore, as they are now more dependent than ever on the government for their survival, the Iraqi people are even less likely to risk open defiance.

Unlike the reaction to sanctions imposed prior to the war, Iraqi popular resentment over their suffering lays the blame squarely on the United States, not the totalitarian regime, whose ill-fated conquest of Kuwait led to the economic collapse of this once-prosperous country. In addition, Iraq’s middle class, which would most likely have formed the political force capable of overthrowing Saddam’s regime, has been reduced to penury. It is not surprising that most of Iraq’s opposition movements oppose the U.S. policy of ongoing punitive sanctions and air strikes.

In addition, U.S. officials have stated that sanctions would remain even if Iraq complied with United Nations inspectors, giving the Iraqi regime virtually no incentive to comply. For sanctions to work, there needs to be a promise of relief to counterbalance the suffering; that is, a carrot as well as a stick. Indeed, it was the failure of both the United States and the United Nations to explicitly spell out what was needed in order for sanctions to be lifted that led to Iraq suspending its cooperation with UN weapons inspectors in December 1998.

4. The United States has not been a fair mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For over two decades, the international consensus for peace in the Middle East has involved the withdrawal of Israeli forces to within internationally recognized boundaries in return for security guarantees from Israel’s neighbors, the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and some special status for a shared Jerusalem. Over the past 30 years, the Palestine Liberation Organization, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, has evolved from frequent acts of terrorism and the open call for Israel’s destruction to supporting the international consensus for a two-state solution. Most Arab states have made a similar evolution toward favoring just such a peace settlement.

However, the U.S. has traditionally rejected the international consensus and currently takes a position more closely resembling that of Israel’s right-wing government: supporting a Jerusalem under largely Israeli sovereignty, encouraging only partial withdrawal from the occupied territories, allowing for the confiscation of Palestinian land and the construction of Jewish-only settlements and rejecting an independent state Palestine outside of Israeli strictures.

The interpretation of autonomy by Israel and the United States has thus far led to only limited Palestinian control of a bare one-fourth of the West Bank in a patchwork arrangement that more resembles American Indian reservations or the infamous Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa than anything like statehood. The U.S. has repeatedly blamed the Palestinians for the violence of the past year, even though Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights group have noted that the bulk of the violence has come from Israeli occupation forces and settlers.

Throughout the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the U.S. has insisted on the two parties working out a peace agreement among themselves, even though there has always been a gross asymmetry in power between the Palestinians and their Israeli occupiers. The U.S. has blamed the Palestinians for not compromising further, even though they already ceded 78 percent of historic Palestine to the Israelis in the Oslo Accords; the Palestinians now simply demand that the Israelis withdraw their troops and colonists only from lands seized in the 1967, which Israel is required to do under international law.

The U.S.-backed peace proposal by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak at the 2000 talks at Camp David would have allowed Israel to annex large swaths of land in the West Bank, control of most of Arab East Jerusalem and its environs, maintain most of the illegal settlements in a pattern that would have divided the West Bank into non-contiguous cantons, and deny Palestinian refugees the right of return. With the U.S. playing the dual role of the chief mediator of the conflict as well as the chief diplomatic, financial and military backer of Israeli occupation forces, the U.S. goal seems to be more that of Pax Americana than that of a true peace.

5. U.S. support for Israel occupation forces has created enormous resentment throughout the Middle East.

The vast majority of Middle Eastern states and their people have belatedly acknowledged that Israel will continue to exist as part of the region as an independent Jewish state. However, there is enormous resentment at ongoing U.S. diplomatic, financial and military support for Israeli occupation forces and their policies.

The U.S. relationship with Israel is singular. Israel represents only one one-thousandth of the world’s population and has the 16th highest per capita income in the world, yet it receives nearly 40 percent of all U.S. foreign aid. Direct aid to Israel in recent years has exceeded $3.5 billion annually, with an additional $1 billion through other sources, and has been supported almost unanimously in Congress, even by liberal Democrats who normally insist on linking aid to human rights and international law. Although the American public appears to strongly support Israel’s right to exist and wants the U.S. to be a guarantor of that right, there is growing skepticism regarding the excessive level and unconditional nature of U.S. aid to Israel. Among elected officials, however, there are virtually no calls for a reduction of current aid levels in the foreseeable future, particularly as nearly all U.S. aid to Israel returns to the United States either via purchases of American armaments or as interest payments to U.S. banks for previous loans.

Despite closer American strategic cooperation with the Persian Gulf monarchies since the Gulf War, these governments clearly lack Israel’s advantages in terms of political stability, a well-trained military, technological sophistication and the ability to quickly mobilize human and material resources.

Despite serious reservations about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, most individual Americans have a longstanding moral commitment to Israel’s survival. Official U.S. government policy supporting successive Israeli governments in recent years, however, appears to be crafted more from a recognition of how Israel supports American strategic interests in the Middle East and beyond. Indeed, 99 percent of all U.S. aid to Israel has been granted since the 1967 war, when Israel proved itself more powerful than any combination of its neighbors and occupied the territories of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and other Arabs. Many Israelis supportive of that country’s peace movement believe the United States has repeatedly undermined their efforts to moderate their government’s policies, arguing that Israeli security and Palestinian rights are not mutually-exclusive, as the U.S. seems to believe, but mutually dependent on the other.

As long as U.S. military, diplomatic and economic support of the Israeli government remains unconditional despite Israel’s ongoing violation of human rights, international law and previous agreements with the Palestinians, there is no incentive for the Israeli government to change its policies. The growing Arab resentment that results can only threaten the long-term security interests of both Israel and the United States.

6. The United States has been inconsistent in its enforcement of international law and UN Security Council resolutions.

The U.S. has justified its strict sanctions and ongoing air strikes against Iraq on the grounds of enforcing United Nations Security Council resolutions. In addition, in recent years the United States has successfully pushed the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions against Libya, Afghanistan and Sudan over extradition disputes, an unprecedented use of the UN’s authority. However, the U.S. has blocked sanctions against such Middle East allies as Turkey, Israel and Morocco for their ongoing occupation of neighboring countries, far more egregious violations of international law that directly counter the UN Charter. In recent years, for example, the U.S. has helped block the Security Council from moving forward with a UN-sponsored resolution on the fate of the Moroccan-occupied country of Western Sahara because of the likelihood that the people would vote for independence from Morocco, which invaded the former Spanish colony with U.S. backing in 1975.

Over the past 30 years, the U.S. has used its veto power to protect its ally Israel from censure more than all other members of the Security Council have used their veto power on all other issues combined. This past spring, for example, the U.S. vetoed an otherwise-unanimous resolution which would have dispatched unarmed human rights monitors to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In addition, the U.S. has launched a vigorous campaign to rescind all previous UN resolutions critical of Israel. Washington has labeled them “anachronistic,” even though many of the issues addressed in these resolutions — human rights violations, illegal settlements, expulsion of dissidents, development of nuclear weapons, the status of Jerusalem,and ongoing military occupation — are still germane. The White House contends that the 1993 Oslo Accords render these earlier UN resolutions obsolete. However, such resolutions cannot be reversed without the approval of the UN body in question; the U.S. cannot unilaterally discount their relevance. Furthermore, no bilateral agreement (like Oslo) can supersede the authority of the UN Security Council, particularly if one of the two parties (the Palestinians) believe that these resolutions are still binding.

Most observers recognize that one of the major obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace is the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. However, the U.S. has blocked enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw its settlements from Palestinian land. These settlements were established in violation of international law, which forbids the colonization of territories seized by military force. In addition, the U.S. has not opposed the expansion of existing settlements and has shown ambivalence regarding the large-scale construction of exclusively Jewish housing developments in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Furthermore, the U.S. has secured additional aid for Israel to construct highways connecting these settlements and to provide additional security, thereby reinforcing their permanence. This places the United States in direct violation of UN Security Council resolution 465, which “calls upon all states not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connection with settlements in the occupied territories.”

7. The United States has supported autocratic regimes in the Middle East.

The growing movement favoring democracy and human rights in the Middle East has not shared the remarkable successes of its counterparts in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. Most Middle Eastern governments remain autocratic. Despite occasional rhetorical support for greater individual freedoms, the United States has generally not supported tentative Middle Eastern steps toward democratization. Indeed, the United States has reduced — or maintained at low levels — its economic, military and diplomatic support to Arab countries that have experienced substantial political liberalization in recent years while increasing support for autocratic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco. Jordan, for example, received large-scale U.S. support in the 1970s and 1980s despite widespread repression and authoritarian rule; when it opened up its political system in the early 1990s, the U.S. substantially reduced — and, for a time, suspended — foreign aid. Aid to Yemen was cut off within months of the newly unified country’s first democratic election in 1990.

Despite its laudable rhetoric, Washington’s real policy regarding human rights in the Middle East is not difficult to infer. It is undeniable that democracy and universally recognized human rights have never been common in the Arab-Islamic world. Yet the tendency in the U.S. to emphasize cultural or religious explanations for this fact serves to minimize other factors that are arguably more salient — including the legacy of colonialism, high levels of militarization and uneven economic development — most of which can be linked in part to the policies of Western governments, including the United States. There is a circuitous irony in a U.S. policy that sells arms, and often sends direct military aid, to repressive Middle Eastern regimes that suppress their own people and crush incipient human rights movements, only to then claim that the resulting lack of democracy and human rights is evidence that the people do not want such rights. In reality, these arms transfers and diplomatic and economic support systems play an important role in keeping autocratic Arab regimes in power by strengthening the hand of the state and supporting internal repression. The U.S. then justifies its large-scale military aid to Israel on the grounds that it is “the sole democracy in the Middle East,” even though these weapons are used less to defend Israeli democracy than to suppress the Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination.

8. U.S. policy has contributed to the rise of radical Islamic governments and movements.

The United States has been greatly concerned in recent years over the rise of radical Islamic movements in the Middle East. Islam, like other religions, can be quite diverse regarding its interpretation of the faith’s teachings as they apply to contemporary political issues. There are a number of Islamic-identified parties and movements that seek peaceful coexistence and cooperation with the West and are moderate on economic and social policy. Many Islamist movements and parties have come to represent mainstream pro-democracy and pro-economic justice currents, replacing the discredited Arab socialism and Arab nationalist movements.

There are also some Islamic movements in the Middle East today that are indeed reactionary, violent, misogynist and include a virulently anti-American perspective that is antithetical to perceived American interests. Still others may be more amenable to traditional U.S. interests but reactionary in their approach to social and economic policies, or vice versa.

Such movements have risen to the forefront primarily in countries where there has been a dramatic physical dislocation of the population as a result of war or uneven economic development. Ironically, the United States has often supported policies that have helped spawn such movements, including giving military, diplomatic and economic aid to augment decades of Israeli attacks and occupation policies, which have torn apart Palestinian and Lebanese society, and provoked extremist movements that were unheard of as recently as 20 years ago. The U.S.-led overthrow of the constitutional government in Iran in 1953 and subsequent support for the Shah’s brutal dictatorship succeeded in crushing that country’s democratic opposition, resulting in a 1979 revolution led by hard-line Islamic clerics. The United States actually backed extremist Islamic groups in Afghanistan when they were challenging the Soviet Union in the 1980s, including Osama bin Laden and many of his followers. To this day, the United States maintains very close ties with Saudi Arabia, which – despite being labeled a “moderate” Arab regime — adheres to an extremely rigid interpretation of Islam and is among the most repressive regimes in the world.

9. The U.S. promotion of a neo-liberal economic model in the Middle East has not benefitted most people of the region.

Like much of the Third World, the United States has been pushing a neo-liberal economic model of development in the Middle East through such international financial institutions as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These have included cutbacks in social services, encouragement of foreign investment, lower tariffs, reduced taxes, the elimination of subsidies for farmers and basic foodstuffs as well as ending protection for domestic industry.

While in many cases, this has led to an increase in the overall Gross National Product, it has dramatically increased inequality, with only a minority of the population benefitting. Given the strong social justice ethic in Islam, this growing disparity between the rich and the poor has been particularly offensive to Muslims, whose exposure to Western economic influence has been primarily through witnessing some of the crassest materialism and consumerism from U.S. imports enjoyed by the local elites.

The failure of state-centric socialist experiments in the Arab world have left an ideological vacuum among the poor seeking economic justice which has been filled by certain radical Islamic movements. Neo-liberal economic policies have destroyed traditional economies and turned millions of rural peasants into a new urban underclass populating the teeming slums of such cities as Cairo, Tunis, Casablanca and Teheran. Though policies of free trade and privatization have resulted in increased prosperity for some, far more people have been left behind, providing easy recruits for Islamic activists rallying against corruption, materialism and economic injustice.

10. The U.S. response to Middle Eastern terrorism has thus far been counter-productive.

The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States has highlighted the threat of terrorism from the Middle East, which has become the country’s major national security concern in the post-cold war world. In addition to Osama bin Laden’s underground Al-Qaeda movement, which receives virtually no direct support from any government, Washington considers Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Libya to be the primary sources of state-sponsored terrorism and has embarked on an ambitious policy to isolate these regimes in the international community. Syria’s status as a supporter of terrorism has ebbed and flowed not so much from an objective measure of its links to terrorist groups as from an assessment of their willingness to cooperate with U.S. policy interests, indicating just how politicized “terrorist” designations can be.

Responding to terrorist threats through large-scale military action has been counter-productive. In 1998, the U.S. bombed a civilian pharmaceutical plant in Sudan under the apparently mistaken belief that it was developing chemical weapons that could be used by these terrorist networks, which led to a wave of anti-Americanism and strengthened that country’s fundamentalist dictatorship. The 1986 bombing of two Libyan cities in response to Libyan support for terrorist attacks against U.S. interests in Europe not only killed scores of civilians, but — rather than curb Libyan-backed terrorism — resulted in Libyan agents blowing up a Pan Am airliner over Scotland in retaliation. Military responses generally perpetuate a cycle of violence and revenge. Furthermore, failure to recognize the underlying grievances against U.S. Middle East policy will make it difficult to stop terrorism. While very few Muslims support terrorism — recognizing it as contrary to the values of Islam — the concerns articulated by bin Laden and others about the U.S. role in the region have widespread resonance and will likely result in new recruits for terrorist networks unless and until the U.S. changes its policies.

Don’t Bomb Afghanistan

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It appears that the United States is preparing for a major military strike against Afghanistan. There is no question that the United States needs to respond forcefully to bring the perpetrators of last week’s terrorist attack to justice and to prevent future attacks. A large-scale military action against that country, however, would be a big mistake.

We are not fighting a government with clear fixed targets, such as command and control centers, intelligence headquarters or major military complexes. A loose network of terrorist cells does not have the kind of tangible assets that can be seriously crippled by military strikes.

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has given Bin Laden and his supporters sanctuary, but this is not a typical case of state-backed terrorism. As a result of Bin Laden’s personal fortune and elaborate international network, he does not need and apparently has not received direct financial or logistical support from the Afghan government. Destroying government resources in Afghanistan, therefore, will not in any way cripple Bin Laden and his cohorts.

The Afghan people are the first and primary victims of the Taliban, perhaps the most totalitarian regime on Earth. It would be a tragedy to victimize them still further through a large-scale military operation which would almost certainly lead to widespread civilian casualties. The Taliban’s lack of concern for their own people is already evident as is the Afghan people’s hatred for but inability to challenge this reactionary theocracy.

Mass military action would not only fail to change their policy but it would punish the wrong people, who have already suffered through a 23-year nightmare of communist dictatorship, foreign invasion, civil war, competing war lords and fundamentalist rule.

Indeed, attempting to destroy the country’s infrastructure would do little good. It has already been done.

Should the United States bomb Kabul or other Afghan cities, Taliban leaders would likely escape harm in their bunkers or in remote mountain outposts. The deaths of civilians would likely strengthen support for the regime and even Bin Laden himself, as people under attack tend to rally around their flag.

A ground invasion, as the Soviets learned all too well in the 1980s, would put the United States in an unwinnable counter-insurgency war in a hostile terrain against a people with a long history of resisting outsiders.

In addition, large-scale military strikes would put the United States in violation of international law, since the use of military force is legitimate only for self-defense, not for retaliation.

By contrast, a limited attack against suspected terrorists — involving small commando units, Special Forces, SWAT team-style operations — could bring those responsible to justice and break up the terrorist cells, which could commit attacks in the future yet not create the backlash a more blunt use of force would create.

To fight international terrorism requires international cooperation. The United States needs the active support of Muslim countries to track down and break up Bin Laden’s terrorist cells, which exist well beyond the borders of Afghanistan. Precipitous military action could threaten the unity needed to deal with this very real threat. A large-scale military response would also distract world attention away from the crimes of this past Tuesday where it belongs and onto the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the American attack.

There is an enormous irony if the United States goes to war against the Taliban government of Afghanistan, given that the U.S. played a major role in bringing these Islamic extremists to power. Indeed, the Central Intelligence Agency trained Bin Laden and many of his followers in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan during the 1980s. One of the reasons that he has such a far-flung multinational network is that the CIA actively recruited radical Muslims from throughout Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa to join the Afghan mujahadin in their fight against Soviet forces and their puppet regime in Kabul.

If there is any logic to the terrorists’ madness, it is to have the United States over-react and turn large segments of the Islamic world against the West. To launch a major military operation against Afghanistan would play right into Osama bin Laden’s hands.

http://www.alternet.org/story/11541/don%27t_bomb_afghanistan/?page=entire

Dangerous Times for U.S. Foreign Policy

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The tragic events of September 11 have brought out both the best of America and the worst of America. The former is represented by the heroism of the rescuers, the thousands of people lining up to donate blood and the response of the religious community through prayer vigils and memorial services. The latter is represented by the jingoism, militarism and xenophobia exhibited from the street to the talk shows.

Early indications are that U.S. foreign policy in the aftermath of the attacks is going to be most effected by the latter.

It appears there is bipartisan support for dramatically-increased military spending, despite the fact that most of the proposed increases have nothing to do with counter-terrorism. Indeed, it is questionable whether large-scale military responses can even have much impact on a loose network of terrorist cells.

Leading Democrats in Congress have hinted they would drop their opposition for Bush’s highly-controversial Nuclear Missile Defense plan and support reneging the SALT I treaty. This comes despite the fact that Tuesday’s attack demonstrated that those intent on killing large numbers of Americans have many more effective means at their disposal than launching missiles.

This Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — with bipartisan support — approved the nomination of John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Ironically, Negroponte is known as a strong supporter of terrorism as a political weapon: as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, he actively backed and covered up for the atrocities of U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contras and Honduran death squads.

Today, in the Middle East, the U.S. backs an occupying Israeli army as well as corrupt Arab dictatorships, which kill innocent civilians using weapons provided by the United States. Both the Bush Administration and Congressional Democrats justify supporting these repressive governments in the name of defending our strategic interests in that important region. Ironically, it is just such policies which may have provoked these terrorist attacks, inevitably raising the question as to whether our security interests are really enhanced through such militarization.

Now it appears that, despite this, U.S. support for the Israeli occupation and for the corrupt family dictatorships of the Gulf and other authoritarian Arab regimes will only increase.

We need to re-evaluate our definition of security. The more the U.S. militarizes the Middle East, the less secure we have become. All the sophisticated weaponry, all the brave fighting men and women, and all the talented military leadership we may possess will not stop terrorism as long as our policies cause millions of people to hate us.

President George W. Bush is wrong when he claims we are targeted because we are a “beacon for freedom.” We are targeted because the support of freedom is not part of our policy in the Middle East, which has instead been based upon alliances with repressive governments. If the United States supported a policy based more on human rights, international law and sustainable development and less on arms transfers, air strikes and punitive sanctions, we would be a lot safer. However, the bipartisan reaction in Washington in the wake of the terrorist attacks appears to be just the opposite.

Instead of focusing on further militarization, we need to focus upon improved intelligence and interdiction. Instead of lashing out against perceived hostile communities, we need to re-evaluate policies which lead to such anger and resentment. Instead of continuing the cycle of violence, we need to recognize that America’s greatest strength is not in our weapons of destruction, but in the fortitude, the caring and the noble values of its people.

http://www.alternet.org/story/11508/dangerous_times_for_u.s._foreign_policy/

U.S. Policy Toward Political Islam

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[Alternet.org, September 12, 2001; Download PDF] The perceived growth of radical Islamic movements throughout the Middle East and beyond has not only caused major political upheaval in the countries directly affected but has placed political Islam at the forefront of concerns voiced by U.S. policymakers. One unfortunate aspect of this newfound attention has been the way it has strengthened ugly stereotypes of Muslims already prevalent in the West. This occurs despite the existence of moderate Islamic segments and secular movements that are at least as influential as radicals in the political life of Islamic countries. Even though the vast majority of the world’s Muslims oppose terrorism, religious intolerance, and the oppression of women, these remain the most prevalent images of the Muslim faith throughout the Western world. Such popular misconceptions about Islam and Islamic movements—often exacerbated by the media, popular culture, and government officials—have made it particularly difficult to challenge U.S. policy.