[WCUSP] The US Peace Movement & Hezbullah: The Big Picture (Don't Look, Now!)

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

August 29, 2006 
The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah
The Big Picture (Don't Look,  Now)

By JAMES BROOKS 
Many peace  activists may have felt somewhat bewildered by Hezbollah's 
smashing success in  outfoxing and outfighting the Israeli army in southern Lebanon. 
Was it right to  feel such a visceral satisfaction from these battles fought 
by a group that was  also lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians? Where did we 
stand on Hezbollah,  really? 
We "peace activists" struggle to take rage,  anguish, and disgust and channel 
them into language and tactics we believe will  appeal to the general public. 
In order to persevere in our relatively fruitless  efforts, we guard our 
optimism. 
Whether our focus is Colombia, Haiti, Mexico,  Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, 
or any other US-supported war-and-poisoning zone,  our news is a steady diet 
of inhumane horrors and injustices. For many of us,  that's enough. We may 
(wittingly or not) avoid or reject analysis and  information that suggests the 
situation is much worse than we already know it to  be, fearing burnout and 
despair. 
We may also worry that an analysis that is too  dissonant with the dominant 
paradigm will alienate the public. Leading figures  in the movement remember to 
utter the pieties that are supposed to legitimize  our message, such as the 
"importance of maintaining a strong defense."  Connecting the wrong dots 
threatens the tenuous bridge we have built between  reality and the world according 
to the machine. 
But maintaining an unsatisfactory compromise built  on increasingly unreal 
assumptions will inevitably produce denial. Thus we find  ourselves where we are 
today, tripping over an array of mostly unconscious  barriers to a realistic 
understanding of our present predicament. 
The Israeli-US war on Lebanon crystallized the  picture that we are afraid to 
see. 
It put the Bush cabal's determination to attack  Iran on "the front burner" 
and the "fast track", despite the consternation of  old guard "realists" of US 
imperial diplomacy, who worry Bush is about to start  World War III.  
And it resoundingly affirmed the ability of  today's resistance fighters to 
undermine Israeli and US-UK attempts to enforce  foreign occupations, striking 
fear in the hearts of highly-placed warmongers on  both sides of the Atlantic. 
They will probably respond by calling for even more  "air power" next time. 
Lebanon was the fourth all-out war on an  Arab/Muslim country in the last 
four years, all waged by the US-UK "coalition"  and/or the Israeli-US "alliance". 
Let's consider the pretexts offered to justify  this serial criminal warfare. 
Afghanistan was invaded and destroyed (again),  ostensibly to avenge 9/11 by 
destroying Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, even  though the FBI has admitted 
that it has "no hard evidence connecting bin Laden  to 9/11."  
Iraq was invaded and destroyed (again) to find  mythical weapons of mass 
destruction. 
The Gaza Strip was invaded and destroyed (again)  because resistance fighters 
allied to Hamas captured an Israeli soldier in a  retaliatory cross-border 
raid. 
Lebanon was invaded and destroyed (again) because  Hezbollah captured two 
Israeli soldiers in a retaliatory cross-border  raid. 
The grand total of pretexts? One unlikely suspect,  one myth, and three 
captured soldiers, who were all doing fine at last report.  For this? 
Of course the US and Israel have a long list of  genuine reasons to wage each 
of these wars and carry out the whole bloody  scheme. But the official 
excuses they offer to the rest of the nations of the  world have meaning, too. 
In this case they appear to mean, "See, I can lie  through my teeth and you 
can't do a damn thing about it except say, 'Yes, sir.'  The world is what we 
say it is, or you don't have a place in it. I have many  ways of making your 
life miserable. And don't forget, I'm unpredictable. I can  do crazy things and 
get away with them." 
The steady application of this kind of diplomacy  has smashed our naïve hopes 
by sucking the EU and the UK ever more deeply into  the orbit of US-Israeli 
foreign policy, to the point where the Arabs can't trust  either of them any 
more than they can trust us. 
While most people have been distracted by the  shock and awe of America's 
military presence in the Middle East, Israel's  studiously ignored long war on 
the Palestinians has descended to new depths of  daily living hell. 
The accelerating ethnic cleansing of the northern  and eastern West Bank 
threatens to squeeze even the possibility of Palestinian  life out of the land. 
The Jordan Valley is being prepared for illegal  "annexation" to Israel.  
In Israel's 'total war' on the "liberated" Gaza  Strip, the IAF has destroyed 
the main power station, all major roads and  bridges, the sole (unused) 
airport, several government and civic buildings, and  dozens of homes. 
Now at least a third of the poverty-stricken  inhabitants do not have power 
or running water. Israel also imposed a total  blockade on Gaza, which remains 
in force today with EU cooperation. This little  "war", still raging on, has 
already killed nearly 200 Palestinians, more than  half of them civilians. One 
Israeli soldier has died in the "fighting".  
And more civilians are dying because Israel and  the US and the EU and Canada 
and Britain, all those great democracies, conspired  to cut off funds and 
embargo the finances of the PA when it became too  democratic in a free and fair 
election last January. 
The sick, especially children and the elderly, are  dying because hospitals 
have little or no electricity, are running out of fuel,  have only the most 
rudimentary medical supplies (if that) and no money to pay  their staff. This is 
how the US plays politics in the Middle East.  
And more war is on the way. Palestine now finds  that its struggle for 
self-determination and survival has been hijacked to serve  as a crucible for the 
next phase of the empire's plan, in which Iran and Syria  are hot-branded as 
"terrorist states" that must also be forcibly  "liberated". 
The propaganda campaign is going on full-tilt as  we speak. Its rules are 
wonderfully simple; whenever you mention the Palestinian  or Lebanese resistance, 
follow it with this phrase, or its equivalent: "a  terrorist group funded and 
armed by Syria and Iran". 
As a result, the Palestinian-Lebanese resistance  may become the hinge of a 
crystallizing global divide. It seems unlikely that  Palestine will enjoy any 
benefit from this honor, but those pages have yet to be  written. 
In hindsight, wasn't it obvious that World War III  had begun when the 
world's "sole superpower" declared an open-ended "global war"  on an indefinite, 
multinational enemy? 
And what is the big picture for us here at home?  The debacle of last 
summer's hurricanes was searing evidence that the domestic  underbelly of the 
government is rapidly withering into an outsourced husk of  uselessness. The 
parasites continue to multiply, infecting the whole body with  corruption, cronyism, 
profiteering, and lawlessness. 
The vast wealth of the nation is controlled by one  percent of its citizens. 
Draconian funding cuts drive people to food shelves and  soup kitchens in 
unprecedented numbers, neglected by a fearful herd trying to  work enough hours to 
sustain an unsustainable debt.  
During the past fifty years, the relationship  between the federal government 
and corporate-finance power has transformed from  a formally bipolar 
arrangement into today's unipolar alignment. Government now  functions primarily to 
serve shifting forces of corporate-finance power (and the  odd foreign 
government) as a facilitator, benefactor, warrior, and spendthrift  customer. 
In the modern age, this fusion of money power and  national government is 
called fascism. It has been observed that fascist  governments typically resort 
to outlandish, racially-charged propaganda and  embark on increasingly reckless 
wars of aggression. They usually conduct  intensive domestic surveillance and 
counterintelligence, rig elections, imprison  large percentages of their 
populations, sadistically torture prisoners and  detainees, and police and 
"debate" by racial- and political-profiling. They  always aggressively expand the 
executive power of the central  government. 
You don't have to wait until they arrest you, too,  to decide that America 
has become a fascist state. The evidence is all around  you. Those who still 
have difficulty seeing the picture might be advised to stop  listening to 
National Public Radio. 
What do "peace activists" do in a fascist state?  What is the true potential 
of our efforts to "change public opinion" in the  world's most advanced 
propaganda regime? What actions by a citizen are morally  justified to resist this 
tyranny, injustice, and bloodshed? Which would be most  effective? What have 
other people done in this situation? How do we feel about  that? 
Is it sane to continue to pretend that we live in  a "democracy" when we 
manifestly do not? Does our squeamishness about armed  resistance by Arabs and 
Muslims reflect an unconsciously imperial notion, that  we might have peace if 
only they didn't fight back? Are we willing to do  everything we can to stop 
this global menace, starting with ourselves? These are  but a few of the 
questions dying to be asked now by all people of  conscience. 
So, how do we feel about Hezbollah, which dealt  the quickest and most 
embarrassing blow yet to the war plans of "our" empire?  How can we not feel 
admiration, even gratitude, for their determination to  prevent another bloody 
occupation? Didn't they accomplish more in 34 days than  we have accomplished in 
nearly four decades of a preposterous "peace process"  chronically violated and 
manipulated to prolong the occupation? 
At the end of his recent New Yorker article,  Watching Lebanon: Washington's 
interests in Israel's war, Sy Hersh quoted John  Arquilla, a defense analyst 
at the Naval Postgraduate School, about the Bush  neocons' view of warfare: 
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the  same thing and expecting a 
different result." 
We who seek peace must ask ourselves if we have  not also gone 'insane', 
expecting different results from actions that obviously  haven't worked. To guard 
our optimism in the New World Order, we Americans will  have to learn to see 
peace the way most Palestinians see it: as the inevitable  fruit of resolute 
resistance to aggression and injustice. 
James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a _Just Peace in 
Palestine/Israel_ (http://www.vtjp.org/) . He can be  contacted at 
_jamiedb at wildblue.net_ (mailto:jamiedb at wildblue.net) .
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