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<h1 style='vertical-align:top'><b><font size=4 color="#003399" face=inherit><span
style='font-size:13.0pt'>What Next? Reflections for the Children of the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region><o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<h4 style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color="#003399" face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>Anthony
Barnett Al-Hayat -
04/09/06<o:p></o:p></span></font></h4>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Nearly five years after the 'Axis of Evil'
speech, the thing that continues to annoy is how President Bush, Prime Minister
Blair and now Israeli spokesmen, claim to be the ones who are opposing
terrorism. Anyone who does not support them, they suggest, is soft and
permissive of bin Laden and copy-cat gangs of violent fundamentalists.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>If I had a great deal of money, I would
take Bush and Blair to court for aiding and abetting terrorism. They were
warned that their so-called 'War on Terrorism' would make things worse. And it
has. It makes them fellow perpetrators of the current disasters.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Indeed, when I learnt at the start of the
recent conflict that an Israeli general had said on television that it would
turn back the clock twenty years on the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>, I thought this guy is
threatening collective punishment on an entire nation for a guerrilla incident.
It is the kind of outrageous thing retired generals say. I was confident he
would be officially repudiated and told to zip his mouth. But no, it turns out
he was Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the Chief of Staff directly in charge of
the campaign that aerially bombed power stations, water plants and factories.
One definition of terrorism is precisely that it attempts to deliver collective
punishment.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The word "disproportionate" is
code for a deep revulsion over such behaviour - behaviour that makes it seem
that Israel believes it has the right to impose on any society which touches or
challenges it what it has already imposed upon Palestine.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>No great wisdom is needed to see that such
a strategy dooms all sides to destruction, perhaps within a generation.
Opposition to it, to Bush, Blair, Halutz and their approach of "making war
on terror", stems from a confidence that there is a better, more effective
and lasting way of frustrating terrorism, a way that also protects human
rights, democracy and justice from their hands. It is an opposition shared by
large numbers in the established democracies, in many of them a clear majority.
Most people around the world have been wiser than the occupants of the White
House and <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">10 Downing Street</st1:address></st1:Street>.
This is an important democratic resource to hold onto in the coming months and
maybe years.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'><br>
II<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The masters of the West are not only
fighting terrorism the wrong way, they are screwing up on their own terms. The
invasion of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> was
misconceived, but having done it, it would have been far better if the <st1:country-region
w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> had at least succeeded, as it might have, in
helping <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>
become the democracy that its people wanted at the time. Instead, it turned itself
into an occupying force, apparently trusting no one.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The New York Times ran a telling article
on 16 August. It said that a classified report by the US Defense Intelligence
Agency recorded that the number of explosive devices in <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> had risen
from 1,454 in January to 2,625 in July (of which 1,666 exploded and 959 were
discovered before they went off). The number of Americans killed dropped from
42 to 38, thanks to better armor. This may have encouraged an impression that
the only story in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>
today is a "slide towards civil war". But in fact 70 percent of the
explosions were directed against the American-led military force. The number of
Americans wounded "soared, to 518 in July from 287 in January".
But the most important part of the story was not the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> military's assessment of the
growing reach and effectiveness of its opponents. It is worth quoting the
paragraphs in full - they came quietly at the end:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>"…some outside experts who have
recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were
beginning to plan for the possibility that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s democratically elected
government might not survive.<br>
"Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are
considering alternatives other than democracy," said one military affairs
expert who received an <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>
briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of
anonymity.<br>
"Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect," the
expert said, "but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting
away from democracy."<br>
What does mean it, to "plan" for democracy not "surviving".
The mixture of active and passive should arouse suspicion. If the White House
is "considering alternatives" to democracy, could it be
something on the lines of "Better our dictator than their's"? But
wasn't this the very reason why the US supported Saddam Hussein against Iran in
the first place, when Donald Rumsfeld went to meet and shake the bad man's hand
in 1983? Democracy was the last but also the best reason for the invasion. If <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>'s elected government is replaced by an
alternative at the instigation of the White House then <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
defeat will be complete.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'><br>
III<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><font
size=2 color=black face=inherit><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>America</span></font></st1:place></st1:country-region><font
color=black><span style='color:black'> has been defeated - not just the
Rumsfeld strategy, or President Bush. His successor will not be able to pick up
the phone and say "Hey, it was them not me, let's move on" and expect
a return to the status quo ante bellum of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> hegemony. <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> itself,
its state and its system of government is undergoing a defeat. The more it denies
this, the greater the danger to us all.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>It is a moral defeat, from <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Guantanamo</st1:place></st1:City> to the
Manichaean unilateralism of good against evil. It is a constitutional defeat
for a system that permitted Bush to steal an election and whose courts are only
slowly establishing fundamental rights but doing so under a barrage from the
right. It is a democratic defeat because the politics which permitted it is
based on a financially suborned, gerrymandered, often uncheckable, low-turnout
voting system that threatens to reduce suffrage in the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> to
government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich - while it invades countries
abroad in the name of democratic self-rule. It is a defeat for its media that
misleads and misjudges. A defeat for its political class which as a whole has
lost the capacity to oppose. And soon, from all accounts, <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> is also
about to suffer an economic defeat on a global scale. Above all, perhaps, it is
a defeat for American intelligence in every sense of that word.<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>IV<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Have we been here before? The Defeat of
America is the title of a book of essays written in the early seventies by the
distinguished American historian Henry Steele Commager. In it he wrote,
"Why do we find it so hard to accept this elementary lesson of history,
that some wars are so deeply immoral that they must be lost, that the war in
Vietnam is one of these wars and that those who resist it are the truest
patriots?"<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>We should beware of simplistic
comparisons. '<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>'
was more an epoch than an episode, longer even than the ten years of maximum
conflict from 1965-75. With hindsight it also includes Watergate, the opening
to China, the US bombing of Cambodia, the frustration of Nixon and Kissinger's
war plan in Vietnam itself, and then Nixon's ejection from office in the face
of certain impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanours against the United
States, as he set out to subvert an election and then covered up his role, as
part of his and Kissinger's attempt to create an imperial Presidency. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Already at least two major differences can
be seen between that war and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
In Vietnam America's defeat meant there was a worthy and deserved victor - the
Vietnamese under Ho Chi Minh's communists. They were promptly punished for
their triumph, by Pol Pot's attacks and above all by the Chinese (whose doomed
and stultifying one-party system they still share). Nonetheless, they were the
leaders of the original national and anti-colonial revolution. They had no
quarrel with the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United
States</st1:place></st1:country-region> and launched no attack upon it. In <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> by
contrast there is no opposition that can attract support. It is a defeat that
brings only further defeat.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Second, in its defeat <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> could
celebrate itself. As Commager puts it in his conclusion, the Constitution was
"vindicated". The courts stood firm. The press, the so-called fourth
estate, held up its head with pride as it exposed Nixon against ferocious
pressure and did not blink. Opposition to the war removed President Johnson.
The system itself removed Nixon. A renewal of the American political system as a
democracy took place in the wake of the disastrous engagement in <st1:place
w:st="on">Indochina</st1:place>.<br>
<br>
This domestic achievement was undone. <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>'s
liberal triumph in the Cold War masked the roll-back of the liberal gains made
thanks to the constitution in the aftermath of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region>. In the quarter century
from the US forced evacuation of Saigon in 1975 to the presidential election of
2000, the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>
media was suborned, its commitment to basic objectivity undone. A relentless
effort to impeach <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City>
for denying a sexual liaison under oath had as its real target the constitution
itself. The triviality of the issue showed that the Republicans accepted only
the technicality and not the gravity of the charges against Nixon. A
constitutional system designed to provide impartial protection was hollowed out
and made an instrument for partisanship (nominations to the Supreme Court being
a perfect example).<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The way was thus prepared for the
Bush/Cheney attempt to recreate the imperial Presidency that had proved beyond
Nixon's reach.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'><br>
V<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>9/11 offered them the opportunity. They
took it extremely well. The important thing about 9/11 is what happened on
9/12. It was less the attack that will come to define what the burning towers
stand for, than what was then made it.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The rest of world said, "We are all
Americans".<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>What we meant was we had all been bombed
and attacked and lost innocents and we identified with and supported Americans
against this appalling assault. (Paradoxically, even those who callously
cheered at 9/11 did so because they welcomed Yankee imperialism being
humiliated and hurt like them.) There was a profound and justified sense of a
need for solidarity. Geopolitically, the international system as a whole backed
the invasion of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>
for harbouring Osama bin Laden.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>It was a never-to-be-repeated opportunity
for the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
to create around itself an alliance of sympathy. We can be sure such an
alliance would have dealt effectively with terrorism on the basis of shared
judicial procedures, bringing the rule of law to the world in a new fashion, as
well as further isolating and soon undermining regimes like those of Saddam.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The generous reaching out to the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
was also challenge. Implicit in the offer was that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> accept that it is a country
like other countries, each special, each capable of being hurt, in need of
alliances, having to participate in relationships it could not simply dictate.
What a fantastic moment, what a wonderful opportunity.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Thanks to Bush and Cheney the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> told the
rest of the world to fuck off.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>(Only Tony Blair then stepped forward to
say "fuck me".)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Bush and Cheney declared war and assumed
war-time powers. They threw alliances to the wind, they formulated a new
national security doctrine authorising preventative attack, they mobilised
their military against a global 'axis of evil', they asserted that if you were
not with them you were with the terrorists, they initiated illegal bugging and
interception within America on a scale even Nixon could hardly have dreamt of.<br>
<br>
Why did they do this? To fight terrorism, when every serious expert warned that
an invasion of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>
was just what bin Laden wanted? To secure control of oil supplies? To spread
democracy (from the creators of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Guantanamo</st1:place></st1:City>
and Abu Graib)? Looking back over the arguments about <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
international strategy over the last five years and its supposed
Neo-Conservative nature, perhaps the explanation is that they did not care
about or take any serious interest at all in the rest of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Cheney and Rumsfeld were recruited as young
men into Nixon's 1969 White House. They surely dreamt of revenge for Watergate.
9/11 offered a wonderful opportunity for just this, and they unleashed an
assault upon the political and constitutional system which had made Watergate
possible. This would explain the sense of coup which accompanied Bush's
declaration of "war" and the "cabal" like nature of the
group that implemented it. More important, it would mean that the motives
driving <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>'s post-9/11
foreign policy have been fundamentally domestic, using policy towards the rest
of the world as a means of achieving ends within the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The verbiage of neo-conservatism provided
a useful cover but was never the 'doctrine' of Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld. This
was an illusion of intellectuals occupationally prone to the narcissistic
belief that their words matter even for those who seldom read. Bush and his
assistants did not seek to rule <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>
in order to shape the world. When, thanks to 9/11, they declared a
world-shaping policy, they did so in order to rule <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> all the better.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>As domestic policy the Bush/Cheney
strategy proved itself a brilliant success. It had already mobilised the money,
built the churches and fixed the media. With these assets in hand they used
9/11 to appeal to a deep aspect of American nationalism that they understood
and felt at home with (and whose history and nature has been brilliantly
dissected by Anatol Lieven). Politicians who have the capacity to mobilize and
reshape a nationalism are genuine leaders - at home. This was where they were
smart, not stupid, and how they came to be more than just a cabal.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'><br>
VI<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>And abroad? "What you call
unilateralism I call leadership", John Bolton once said, before he became
UN Ambassador to the United Nations. The White House creates reality. It
declares victory in advance - because this is what works with its voters. Which
is why the only event to significantly damage Bush has been Hurricane Katrina,
whose reality outspun the President's team.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><font
size=2 color=black face=inherit><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Israel</span></font></st1:place></st1:country-region><font
color=black><span style='color:black'> has been an example, perhaps even an
inspiration to them in the creation of realities. The influence of the Israeli
lobby in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region>,
now reinforced by Rapture evangelism and its fantastical, apocalyptic obsession
with the Holy Land, is said to exercise too great an influence in <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State>. But perhaps
what has really hypnotised American leaders since 1967 is <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
success. This mainstreams with <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
'winner takes all' political culture. <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>'s
failure to create the reality it desired in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region>
is therefore especially dangerous for it as the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> is not the best ally for those
who really need it.<br>
<br>
In Hizbullah <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
has finally created an enemy worthy of itself. The war it has just waged
against it in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region>
proved not to be a continuation of the others <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> has fought since 1948. For
all the pan-Arab talk, these were, Fred Halliday has pointed out, comparatively
local engagements. Now, he argues, two great regional forces are redefining the
<st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place>, both born in 1979. In February
that year the Iranian revolution lit the torch of Shia fundamentalism, in
October the Soviet invasion of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region>
initiated the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>
arming of Sunni mujahadin, of whom the most notable was Osama bin Laden. Today,
both currents have condensed onto <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>'s
conquest of <st1:City w:st="on">Palestine</st1:City>, and the conflict over <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
borders really has become regional.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Therefore, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> has to make a deal if it is
to flourish as more than a besieged outpost . One reason, it can now be seen,
is technical. The Katyusha rockets that Hizbullah fired at <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> were
old-fashioned, kinetic devices stuffed with ball-bearings that belong to the
analogue age. Soon an inexpensive global positioning system will be replacing
some of those passive metal balls. Sooner or later do-it-yourself drones, with
contour-hugging devices to get under radar, will be constructed, easily capable
of making a long-range, one-way journey, even from a suburb of Amman or Cairo.
Fear will return to Tel Aviv undermining its commercial life. What is a wall?
It is a defensive barrier designed for explosives to be flown over.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>But only a culture and a human network,
not technology, assembles, hides, and fires such devices. Previously, defeating
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> meant shouting Allah
Akbar, while firing an AK-47 into the air, wasting ordinance, risking wounding
your own people and giving <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
intelligence. Now it is now cool to be Hiz, to wear heavy-duty spectacles,
speak slowly, not show off and never be photographed.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>There is only one way to 'defeat' such a
movement. In so far as its grievances are genuine, these must be addressed. It
must be welcomed (whatever the gritting of teeth) into a legitimate
representative process where it can be held to account for the authority it
exercises. In this way it also becomes itself and ceases to be a puppet of others.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>How is this possible if, as with
Hizbullah, it is committed to the annihilation of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>? Well, only when there is a
secure Palestinian state with a leadership that insists on a ceasefire and
tells its allies not to fire on Tel Aviv because it desires peace not war. A <st1:City
w:st="on">Palestine</st1:City> that looks forward and sees a life for itself as
a country is the precondition for politically isolating and then disarming
those who want to wipe <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
of the map. Without this <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
will never be secure. Hence the unbelievable folly of spurning a Hamas offer of
a ceasefire when it won the elections in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:City>,
the starting point for such a process.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'><br>
VII<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>In this era of international petitions,
what should a global patriot call for? There are two immediate conflicts. One
is against the terrorist networks inspired by al-Qaida. They need to be
arrested and they can be. It is not a war, but nor is it a conflict that can be
lost if that means terrorists immolating themselves with nuclear devices. The
second is the 'war on terror'. This should be abandoned. It is making terrorism
worse by playing their game.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>At the heart of this "war" is
the centre of the so-called axis-of-evil, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region>, now the most likely candidate
for further escalation by the Bush/Cheney White House as it continues to try
and "define reality" for its domestic purposes. Nothing is more
likely to undermine the fundamentalists of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Tehran</st1:place></st1:City> than diplomatic recognition, trade and
tourism. They may be able to do the enrichment of uranium but they can't do the
enrichment of their own people.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>Will the reality-shock of this year's <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region> war make the leaders of <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> see sense? I'm told not.
That it is too late. <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>'s
conclusion after <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region> is
that it has to stay in the <st1:place w:st="on">West Bank</st1:place> and further
impose itself unilaterally, is merely a gloomy confirmation that all is lost.
For the settlements are a misnamed, they not a fixed point. They either grow or
shrink. To keep them is to expand them, and to expand them is to further the
illegal and inhuman expropriation of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:City>.
It means the parties to the conflict will never be able to find it in
themselves to engage in the agreements and mutual recognition they need. In
which case the outcome will eventually be nuclear war over <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:City> while the Chinese and Indians rub
their hands in disbelief.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>I refuse to believe this.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>But what is the alternative, what other
direction is there that can set in motion a different momentum? In an important
and deeply responsible critique of the Bush foreign policy, to be published at
the end of September, Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman call for an inclusive
regional conference over Iraq (with America dropping its childish refusal to
talk directly with Iran) and for Israel and Palestine to be given accession
status for full membership of the European Union. To the latter suggestion we
should now add the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
as well.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 color=black face=inherit><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:black'>The European Union is a machinery for
creating peace where there was war. This was its initial impulse with respect
to <st1:country-region w:st="on">France</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Northern Ireland</st1:country-region> peace agreement was made
possible and underpinned by the fact that both the <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region>
and the <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Irish</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Republic</st1:PlaceType>
were in the <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place>. Europe has a responsibility
towards all three small countries on the <st1:place w:st="on">Eastern
Mediterranean</st1:place>. None, it could be said, are fully viable on their
own, but the EU is also purpose built to protect vulnerable small states.
Membership would provide the secular framework necessary for religious
societies to live in peace with each other. It would secure full political and
human rights in them all in a way that would be credible and legitimate. The
EU's critics often argue that it purpose is to become a 'super-state' that
threatens the nations its encompasses. In fact the <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place>
has rescued its member nation states from fratricide and permits their revival
in a context of shared sovereignty and peace. Given what we have just witnessed
we are entitled to ask, if not this what next?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p style='vertical-align:top'><font size=2 face=inherit><span style='font-size:
10.5pt'>Dedicated to Saqi Books and Dar al Saqi whose warehouse in <st1:place
w:st="on">South Beirut</st1:place> was twice hit by bombs, 23 August 2006<font
color=black><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></span></font></p>
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