Naive Armchair Warriors in Delusional War

Naive Armchair Warriors in Delusional War
Alastair Crooke, The Guardian

The French philosopher Michel Foucault notes that in all societies discourse is controlled — imperceptibly constrained, perhaps, but constrained nonetheless. We are not free to say exactly what we like. The norms set by institutions, convention and our need to keep within the boundaries of accepted behavior and thought limit what may be touched upon. The Archbishop of Canterbury experienced the backlash from stepping outside these conventions when he spoke about aspects of Islamic law that might be imported into British life.

Once, a man was held to be mad if he strayed from this discourse — even if his utterings were credited with revealing some hidden truth. Today, he is called “naive”, or accused of having gone “native”. Recently, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) marshaled former senior military and intelligence experts in order to assert such limits to expression by warning us that “deference” to multiculturalism was undermining the fight against Islamic “extremism” and threatening security.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a recent interview with a German magazine, embellished RUSI’s complaints of naivety and “flabby thinking”. Radical Islam won’t stop, he warned, and the “virus” would only become more virulent if the US were to withdraw from Iraq.

The charge of naivety is not limited to failing to understand the concealed and duplicitous nature of Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran and Syria; it extends to not grasping the true nature of the wider “enemy” the West is facing. “I don’t like the term ‘war on terror’ because terror is a method, not a political movement; we are in a war against radical Islam,” says Kissinger. But who or what is radical Islam? It is those who are not “moderates”, he explains. Certainly, a small minority of Muslims believe that only by “burning the system” can a fresh stab at a just society be made. But Kissinger’s definition of “moderate” Islam sounds no more than a projection of the Christian narrative after Westphalia, by which Christianity became a private matter of conscience, rather than an organizational principle for society. If radical Islam, with which these experts tell us we should be at war, encompasses all those who are not enamored of secular society, and who espouse a vision of their societies grounded in the values of Islam, then these experts are advocating a war with Islam — because Islam is the vision for their future favored by many Muslims.

Mainstream Islamists are indeed challenging Western secular and materialist values, and many do believe Western thinking is flawed — that the desires and appetites of man have been reified into representing man himself. It is time to re-establish values that go beyond “desires and wants”, they argue.

Many Islamists also reject the Western narrative of history and its projection of inevitable “progress” toward a secular modernity; they reject the Western view of power-relationships within societies and between societies; they reject individualism as the litmus of progress in society; and, above all, they reject the West’s assumption that its empirical approach lends unassailability and objective rationality to its thinking — and universality to its social models.

People may, or may not, agree, but the point is that this is a dispute about ideas, about the nature of society, and about equity in an emerging global order. If Western discourse cannot step beyond the enemy that it has created, these ideas cannot be heard —- or addressed.

This is the argument that Jonathan Powell made last week when he argued that Britain should understand the lessons of Northern Ireland: We should talk to Islamist movements, including Al-Qaeda. It has to be done, because the West needs to break through the fears and constraints of an over-imagined “enemy”.

Camouflaged behind a language dwelling exclusively on “their” violence and “their” disdain for rationality, these “realists” propose not a war on terror, nor a war to preserve “our values” — for we are not about to be culturally overwhelmed. No Islamist seriously expects that a “defeated” West would hasten to adopt the spirit of the Islamic revolution.

No, the West’s war is a military response to ideas that question Western supremacy and power. The nature of this war on “extremism” became evident when five former chiefs of defense staff of NATO states gathered at a think tank in Washington earlier this year. Their aim was not to query the realism of a war on ideas, but to empower NATO for an “uncertain world”.

“We cannot survive … confronted with people who do not share our values, who unfortunately are in the majority in terms of numbers, and who are extremely hungry for success,” Germany’s former chief of defense staff warned. Their conclusion was that the security of the West rests on a “restoration of its certainties”, and on a new form of deterrence in which enemies will find there is not, and never will be, a place in which they feel safe.

The generals concluded that NATO should adopt an asymmetrical and relentless pursuit of its targets regardless of others’ sovereignty; to surprise; to seize the initiative; and to use all means, including the nuclear option, against its enemies. In Foucault’s discourse, he identified a further group of rules serving to control language: none may enter into discourse on a specific subject unless he or she is deemed qualified to do so. Those, like the archbishop, who penetrate this forbidden territory — reserved to security expertise — to ask that we see the West for what it has become in the eyes of others, are liable to be labeled as naively weakening “our certainties” and undermining national resolve.

But do we, who are brushed out of this discourse by the blackmail of presumed expertise, really believe them? Do we really believe, after so much failure, that Islamist alternative ideas will be suppressed by a NATO plunged into an asymmetrical warfare of assassinations and killings? The West’s vision for society holds power only so long as people believe it holds power. Do we really think that if force has not succeeded, that only more and greater force can restore belief in the Western vision? If that is the limit to Western thinking, then it is these “realists”, these armchair warriors fighting a delusional war against a majority who “do not share our values”, who are truly naive.

— Alastair Crooke is a former security adviser to the EU and founder and director of the Conflicts Forum conflictsforum.org

Palestinians Need a Powerful Advocate

Palestinians Need a Powerful Advocate
Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk

The concept of America as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict is obsolete. The US was never an honest broker but it doesn’t even bother pretending any more. Dick Cheney recently told the Israeli premier, the US commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable and warned the Palestinians that violence against Israel would kill their hopes of a state. And while it’s true that the current administration will shortly be emptying their desks, the three presidential hopefuls sound as though they’re singing from the Bush administration’s hymn sheet.

Democratic front-runner Barack Obama had this to say on peace in the Middle East: “That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel — our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will always be my starting point”.

His rival Hillary Clinton, who backs a US Embassy in Jerusalem, has said she would cut off aid to Palestinians should they unilaterally declare an independent state, while Republican nominee John McCain has characterized Israel’s enemies as “evil”.

I could list the candidates’ regular junkets to Tel Aviv and pilgrimages to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) but I won’t bore you. You get the point. Everybody with half a brain gets the point. So, in this case, why are Palestinian leaders relying on the good offices of the US to get them a state?

To give this premise context, say, you had a business partner who embezzled your company and left you with nothing but debts. Would you hire his lawyer, who also happened to be his best buddy, to represent you in court? Of course not! And neither would you enlist your mother-in-law to save your crumbling marriage if you had any sense.

Yet this is exactly what the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is doing. It seems that on Washington’s instructions he manipulated a breach with Hamas — as we know from leaked State Department memos — and he’s now asking Washington to become more proactive as a broker. And, let’s face it: They’ve had little success at the job throughout the past decades. Any firm with their record of failure would surely have been sacked an age ago.

Even if by some miracle the Annapolis meet actually produced the required goods in the long run, a US-brokered Palestinian state would consist of nothing more than crumbs from Israel’s table, which I fear the beleaguered Palestinian leadership would be pressured to accept as a better than nothing option.

Where does all this leave the Palestinian people? Precisely nowhere!

When they fight back, which as an occupied people is their right under international law, they are labeled terrorist. When they organize peaceful demonstrations nobody takes any notice. When they invoke a slew of UN resolutions passed in their favor, all they get are yawns from the international community in return. Israel has killed thousands, imprisoned tens of thousands and is incarcerating 1.5 million Palestinians in the world’s largest open-air jail Gaza yet, as far as Washington is concerned, Israel remains the victim/hero.

If there is ever to be a viable Palestinian state, a new paradigm is needed. Instead of one powerful so-called “honest broker”, each side in the conflict should have its own powerful advocate.

The idea that Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate one-on-one, as George W. Bush has suggested on more than one occasion, won’t work in this case simply because one side has military clout and the other hasn’t. This is akin to a deer negotiating with a leopard over the menu of the day when, of course, the deer will end up as lunch.

So who might be up for the job of Palestinian advocate?

Forget the EU for a start. Its major players talk a good talk but when push comes to shove, they’ll fall in behind the US. China has got the muscle and the independence but the Middle East is traditionally outside its geopolitical sphere of influence. Looks hopeless doesn’t it. But wait, there is one candidate itching for the job. Russia. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been canvassing regional support for his country’s potential role as mediator during his visit, last week, to Israel, Syria and the West Bank. Russia has called for an end to Israel’s settlement expansion and also offered to host a peace conference later this year to reinforce Annapolis.

Naturally, Israel is less than enthusiastic. Mahmoud Abbas, on the other hand, has publicly welcomed Russia’s involvement. Provided Moscow is seriously committed to finding a solution rather than posturing for effect, President Abbas should consider the following.

First, he should patch up relations with Hamas in the spirit of last week’s Yemeni-brokered reconciliation agreement. A divided Palestine is a weak Palestine.

Second, he should refuse to negotiate directly with Israel or to show up for smiley photo-ops with visiting American politicians.

Third, as with most disputes, he should simply tell the other side, “Talk to my lawyer”.

If Russia is willing to take on the job, then it should be supported and offered incentives by every single member of the Arab League as well as sympathetic OIC members.

Whatever happens, the Palestinians must quit putting their faith in duplicitous Uncle Sam and seek a new plan with a new partner, one that would have their interests rather than those of their enemy’s at heart.