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The Texas Wars of
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Now
No one likes to admit a mistake. Me
neither. But honesty leaves me no choice.
A few days after the collapse
of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, I happened to go on
a lecture tour in the US.
My message was optimistic.
I expected some good to come out of the tragedy. I reasoned that
the atrocity had exposed the intensity of the hatred for the
US that is spreading throughout the world, and especially the
Muslim world. It would be logical not only to fight against the
mosquitoes, but to drain the swamp. Since the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict was one of the breeding grounds of the hatred - if not
the main one - the US would make a major effort to achieve peace
between the two peoples.
That was what cold logic indicated.
But this is not what happened. What happened was the very opposite.
American policy was not led
by cold logic. Instead of drying one swamp, it created a second
swamp. Instead of pushing the Israelis and Palestinians towards
peace, it invaded Iraq. Not only did the hatred against America
not die down, it flared up even higher. I hoped that this danger
would override even the oil interests and the desire to station
an American garrison in the center of the Middle East.
Thus I committed the very mistake
that I have warned others against many times: to assume that
what is logical will actually happen. A rational person should
not ignore the irrational in politics. In other words, it is
irrational to exclude the irrational.
George W. Bush is an irrational
person, perhaps the very personification of irrationality. Instead
of drawing the logical conclusion from what had happened and
acting accordingly, he set off in the opposite direction. Since
then he has just insisted on "staying the course".
Enter James Baker.
* *
*
SINCE I am already in a confessional
mood, I have to admit that I like James Baker.
I know that this will shock
some of my good friends. "Baker?!" they will cry out,
"The consigliere of the Bush family? The man who helped
George W steal the 2000 elections? The Rightist?"
Yes, yes, the very same Baker.
I like him for his cold logic, his forthright and blunt style,
his habit of saying what he thinks without embellishment, his
courage. I prefer this style to the sanctimonious hypocrisy of
other leaders, who try to hide their real intentions. I would
be happy any time to swap Olmert for Baker, and throw in Amir
Peretz for free.
But that is a matter of taste.
More important is the fact that in all the last 40 years, James
Baker was the only leader in America who had the guts to stand
up and act against Israel's malignant disease: the settlements.
When he was the Secretary of State, he simply informed the Israeli
government that he would deduct the sums expended on the settlements
from the money Israel was getting from the US. Threatened and
made good on his threat.
Baker thus confronted the "pro-Israeli"
lobby in the US, both the Jewish and the Christian. Such courage
is rare in the United States, as it is rare in Israel.
* *
*
THIS WEEK the Iraq Study Group,
led by Baker, published its report.
It confirms all the bleak forecasts
voiced by many throughout the world - myself included - before
Bush & Co. launched the bloody Iraqi adventure. In his dry
and incisive style, Baker says that the US cannot win there.
In so many words he tells the American public: Let's get out
of there, before the last American soldier has to scramble into
the last helicopter from the roof of the American embassy, as
happened in Vietnam.
Baker calls for the end of
the Bush approach and offers a new and thought-out strategy of
his own. Actually, it is an elegant way of extricating America
from Iraq, without it looking like a complete rout. The main
proposals: an American dialogue with Iran and Syria, an international
conference, the withdrawal of the American combat brigades, leaving
behind only instructors. The committee that he headed was bi-partisan,
composed half and half of Republicans and Democrats.
* *
*
FOR ISRAELIS, the most interesting
part of the report is, of course, the one that concerns us directly.
It interests me especially - how could it be otherwise? - because
it repeats, almost word for word, the things I said immediately
after September 11, both in my articles at home and in my lectures
in the US.
True, Baker is saying them
four years later. In these four years, thousands of American
soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died for
nothing. But, to use the image again, when a giant ship like
the United States turns around, it make a very big circle, and
it takes a lot of time. We, in the small speed-boat called Israel,
could do it much quicker - if we had the good sense to do it.
Baker says simply: In order
to stop the war in Iraq and start a reconciliation with the Arab
world, the US must bring about the end of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. He does not say explicitly that peace must be imposed
on Israel, but that is the obvious implication.
In his own clear words: "The
United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle
East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli
conflict."
His committee proposes the
immediate start of negotiations between Israel and "President
Mahmoud Abbas", in order to implement the two-state solution.
The "sustainable negotiations" must address the "key
final status issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right
of return, and the end of conflict."
The use of the title "President"
for Abu Mazen and, even more so, the use of the term "right
of return" has alarmed the whole political class in Israel.
Even in the Oslo agreement, the section dealing with the "final
status" issues mentions only "refugees". Baker,
as is his wont, called the spade a spade.
At the same time, he proposes
a stick and carrot approach to achieve peace between Israel and
Syria. The US needs this peace in order to draw Syria into its
camp. The stick, from the Israeli point of view, would be the
return of the Golan Heights. The carrot would be the stationing
of American soldiers on the border, so that Israel's security
would be guaranteed by the US. In return, he demands that Syria
stop, inter alia, its aid to Hizbullah.
After Gulf War I, Baker - the
same Baker - got all the parties to the conflict to come to an
international conference in Madrid. For that purpose, he twisted
the arm of then Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir, whose entire philosophy
consisted of two letters and one exclamation mark: "No!"
and whose slogan was: "The Arabs are the same Arabs, and
the sea is the same sea" - alluding to the popular Israeli
conviction that the Arabs all want to throw Israel into the sea.
Baker brought Shamir to Madrid,
his arms and legs in irons, and made sure he did not escape.
Shamir was compelled to sit at the table with representatives
of the Palestinian people, who had never been allowed to attend
an international conference before. The conference itself had
no tangible results, but there is no doubt that it was a vital
step in the process that brought about the Oslo agreement and,
more difficult than anything else, the mutual recognition of
the State of Israel and the Palestinian people.
Now Baker is suggesting something
similar. He proposes an international conference, and cites Madrid
as a model. The conclusion is clear.
* *
*
HOWEVER, THIS baker can only
offer a recipe for the cake. The question is whether President
Bush will use the recipe and bake the cake.
Since 1967 and the beginning
of the occupation, several American Secretaries of State have
submitted plans to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All
these plans met the same fate: they were torn up and thrown in
the trash.
The same sequence of events
has been repeated time after time: In Jerusalem, hysteria sets
in. The Foreign Office stands up on its hind legs and swears
to defeat the evil design. The media unanimously condemns the
wicked plot. The Secretary of State of the day is pilloried as
an anti-Semite. The Israeli lobby in Washington mobilizes for
total war.
For example: the Rogers Plan
of Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State, William Rogers.
In the early 70s he submitted a detailed peace plan, the principal
point of which was the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders,
with, at most, "insubstantial alterations".
What happened to the plan?
In face of the onslaught of
"the Friends of Israel" in Washington, Nixon buckled
under, as have all presidents since Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man
of principle who did not need the Jewish votes. No president
will quarrel with the government of Israel if he wants to be
re-elected, or - like Bush now - to end his term in office with
dignity and pass the presidency to another member of his party.
Any senator or congressman who takes a stand that the Israeli
embassy does not like, is committing Harakiri, Washington-style.
The fate of the peace plans
of successive Secretaries of State confirms, on the face of it,
the thesis of the two professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt, that caused a great stir earlier this year. According to
them, whenever there is a clash in Washington between the national
interests of the United States and the national interests of
Israel, it is the Israeli interests which win.
* *
*
WILL THIS happen this time,
too?
Baker has presented his plan
at a time when the US is facing disaster in Iraq. President Bush
is bankrupt, his party has lost control of Congress and may soon
lose the White House. The neo-conservatives, most of them Jews
and all of them supporters of the Israeli extreme Right, who
were in control of American foreign policy, are being removed
one by one, and this week yet another, the American ambassador
to the United Nations, was kicked out. Therefore, it is possible
that this time the President may listen to expert advice.
But that is in serious doubt.
The Democratic Party is subject to the "pro-Israeli"
lobby no less than the Republican Party, and perhaps even more.
The new congress was indeed elected under the banner of opposition
to the continuation of the war in Iraq, but its members are not
jihadi suicide bombers. They depend on the "pro-Israeli"
lobby. To paraphrase Shamir: "The plan is the same plan,
and the trash bin is the same trash bin."
In Jerusalem, the first reaction
to the report was total rejection, expressing a complete confidence
in the ability of the lobby to choke it at birth. "Nothing
has changed," Olmert declared. "There is no one to
talk with," - immediately echoed by the mouth and pen brigade
in the media. "We cannot talk with them as long as the terrorism
goes on," a famous expert declared on TV. That's like saying:
"One cannot talk about ending the war as long as the enemy
is shooting at our troops."
On the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis
I wrote that "the dog is wagging the tail and the tail is
wagging the dog." It will be interesting to see which will
wag which this time: the dog its tail or the tail its dog.
CounterPunch
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