Oorlog tegen Irak voor Israel?

[Mark Giebels]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Beste lijsters,

In een opiniestuk vandaag in de San Francisco Chronicle beweert George
Bisharat, professor aan de Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco,
dat de oorlog tegen Irak voornamelijk gepushed is door een klein groepje
pro-israel extremisten in zowel de CIA en de Bush administration.

Anti-Israelische propaganda of waarheid? Van allebei een beetje denk ik.

Groeten,
Mark

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Impending War on Iraq
American Jihad

George Bisharat Thursday, February 13, 2003

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Many Americans suspect that the war our government is preparing to
launch against Iraq is about oil. That is both correct and incorrect.
True, Iraq possesses huge oil and gas reserves. Yes, the United States
and England, the two countries most adamant for war, are home to the
world's four largest energy conglomerates.

Yet oil is a constant. In a sense, everything in U.S. Middle East policy
for the last 50 years or more has been about oil. For that very reason,
however, oil cannot explain a shift in policy toward war. Some new
variable has entered the equation.

No, the real reason we are going to war is the messianic vision of a
small but influential group of strongly pro-Israeli hawks within the
Bush administration. Their goal is unilateral global domination through
absolute military superiority. U.S. global hegemony will "promote
democracy" and "spread prosperity" through free enterprise and trade.

But the hawks' almost theological obsession with Iraq still needs
explaining. The evidence in support of the "Iraqi threat" to America is
palpably thin. Whether or not Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass
destruction, for years he has been safely contained by threat of nuclear
retaliation.

The hawks recognize this evidentiary weakness, and have aggressively
pressed the CIA to cook its reports to support war. Douglas Feith,
assistant to Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, oversees an
amateur intelligence unit inside the Department of Defense that equips
Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld with unconfirmed, professionally
substandard information (according to Robert Dreyfuss in the American
Prospect) to contest less gung-ho CIA reports. It has reportedly pressed
especially hard to generate evidence of an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection
(consider Colin Powell's Security Council presentation last week in this
light).

Why the determination to overthrow the Iraqi regime? One key is the
special regard of the hawks for Israel's right-wing elements. A number
of senior Bush officials, including Wolfowitz, Feith and others, have
strong affiliations with the Likud Party of Ariel Sharon (as documented
by Bill and Kathleen Christison in the online magazine Counterpunch).
Feith and Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, for example, helped
author a 1996 study for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu describing
Hussein's overthrow as "an important Israeli strategic objective in its
own right -- [and] a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
Interestingly, the study for the Israeli government also advocated
resort to pre-emptive strike -- a theme now taken up by President Bush.

If an Iraqi attack on the United States is far-fetched, a rejuvenated
Iraq could eventually alter the regional balance of power now favorable
to Israel. Iraq is the only Arab state to combine oil wealth, water and
a large population (more than 23 million), making it a potential
powerhouse. War on Iraq would eliminate, for the foreseeable future, any
obstacle to a disposition of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms
that satisfy Israel's territorial ambitions on most or all of the West
Bank.

Israel is quietly exultant at the turn in U.S. policy, occasionally
hinting that Iran or Syria should be next. Israeli Deputy Interior
Minister Gideon Ezra suggested to the Christian Science Monitor in
August that a U.S. attack on Iraq will help Israel impose a new order,
without Arafat, in the Palestinian territories: "The more aggressive the
attack is, the more it will help Israel against the Palestinians. The
understanding would be that what is good to do in Iraq, is also good for
here." A U.S. strike would "undoubtedly deal a psychological blow" to
the Palestinians and would help Israel vis-a-vis Syria, Ezra added.

Does this mean that we are going to war for Israel, rather than the
United States? That question is incomprehensible to the hawks, who view
the two countries as two democracies, shoulder to shoulder in facing the
common threat of terrorism. Like the Israelis, the hawks would not stop
at Iraq. Instead, Iraq is just a first step in redrawing the map of the
entire Middle East. Iraq under a pro-Western leadership, with its
enormous oil reserves, would diminish the strategic value of Saudi
Arabia and negate Saudi leverage vis-a-vis the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict. A new Iraq would be a beachhead for ridding the Middle East of
autocracies -- the wellsprings of terrorism, in the hawks' view --
installing democratic governments, and making the region a haven for
free enterprise and development.

This rosy vision of a revolutionized Middle East overlooks immense
risks. Most obviously, a return to colonialism in the Arab world is
almost certainly a formula for perpetual war -- Osama bin Laden's dream.
Many of us in the Jan. 18 anti-war demonstration in San Francisco --
including supporters of Israel who carried the Israeli flag -- demur
from this American jihad. We have very little time left to stop it.

George Bisharat is a professor of at Hastings College of the Law in San
Francisco, where he teaches a course in law and Middle East societies.

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