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Today's
Stories
September
27, 2007
Andy
Worthington
A Bad Week at Guantánamo
Jonathan
Cook
Why Did Israel Attack Syria?
September 26, 2007
Bill
Quigley
HUD's Home Wreckers
Paul
Craig Roberts
A Pandemic of Police Brutality
Jeff
Kisseloff
Still Smearing Alger Hiss
China
Hand
Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
At the Gates of Paradise
Sonja
Karkar
The Quality of Mercy in Gaza
Mike
Ferner
Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time
Col.
Dan Smith
Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn
Clifton
Ross
Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech
Brenda
Norrell
A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas
Website
of the Day
The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to
Torture
September
25, 2007
Nicole
Colson
On the March Against Racism
Uri
Avnery
Foam on the Water
Brendan
Cooney
Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him!
Harry
Browne
Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell
Marjorie
Cohn
The Drift Toward War with Iran
David
Macaray
The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out
Ralph
Nader
Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress
Dan
Bacher
Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite
Anthony
Papa
Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws
Christopher
Ketcham
All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants
Website
of the Day
John Waters on Free Speech
September
24, 2007
George
Ciccariello-Maher
Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland
Saree Makdisi
The
War on Gaza's Children
David
Keen
Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah
Arendt
Sherwood
Ross
Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for
Sure
Ron
Jacobs
Greenspan's Open Secret
Donna
Saggia
The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values
Mike
Ferner
Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating
Malini
Johar Schueller
Norman Hsu is a Model Minority
Monique
Dols
and Dylan Stillwood
Ahmadinejad and Columbia
Website
of the Day
The Promotion
September 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
On Naomi Klein's "The Shock
Doctrine"
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Beneath the Hideous Veneer of
Security
Linn
Washington, Jr.
The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous
Than Racism
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One)
Alan
Farago
Genuflecting to China
Brian
Cloughley
Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities
Robert
Fantina
The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism
Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
Land Tenure and Resistance in New
Mexico
Jason
Hribal
Fear of an Animal Planet
David
Rosen
Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality
Mike
Whitney
The Era of Global Financial Instability
John
V. Walsh
Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill?
Dave
Lindorff
Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here?
David
Michael Green
Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt
Fred
Gardner
Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger)
Cassandra
Jones
Support Our Mercenaries
Roger
van Zwanenberg
Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Ford
Website
of the Weekend
"For the Bible Tells Me So"
September
21, 2007
Karim
Makdisi
Letter from Lebanon
M.
Shahid Alam
A History of Violence
Alan
Farago
Who Will Buy My House?
Joshua
Frank
The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus
Dave
Zirin
Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports
Kenneth
Couesbouc
A Short History of Lending and Borrowing
Dr.
Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein
Mass Health Care Failure
Ben
Terrall
The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By
Everyone But Pelosi
Steve
Fournier
Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here
Frederico
Fuentes, et al
Voices in Defense of Bolivia
Website
of the Day
Sabra and Shatila, Remembered
September
20, 2007
Kathleen
Christison
Whatever Happened to Palestine?
Zoltan
Grossman
An Endless Occupation?
Paul
Craig Roberts
As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed
Stan
Cox
and Wes Jackson
Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet
Russell
Mokhiber
AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead
Charles
Modiano
Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power
Raymond
J. Lawrence
Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion
Brendan
Cooney
Body-Snatched Nation
Website
of the Day
Mind Control for Breakfast
September
19, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand
Idly By?
Paul
Krassner
The Power of Laughter
Sgt.
Martin Smith
The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq
Seth
Sandronsky
Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own?
Claud
Cockburn
Looking back at the Great Crash
Victoria
Buch
Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing
and Transfer
Robert
Weissman
Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger
Mike
Ferner
Can We Talk?
Dan
Bacher
Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water
Website
of the Day
Housing Cost Calculator
September
18, 2007
Mike
Whitney
U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge
as Dollar and Credit System Reel
Alan
Farago
Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60
Minutes Blew It
John
Ross
America's Great Wall:
Where Will the Workers Go
When They Finish It?
Ron
Jacobs
Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College
Park, Md.
Alex
Doherty
Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement":
Who's Responsible?
September
17, 2007
Marjorie
Cohn
Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11
Attack on Academic Freedom
Paul
Craig Roberts
Conservatism Isn't What It Used to
Be
Ricardo
Alarcón
The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid
the Dawn of a New Era
Marc
Levy
Fake Vets Chasing Fame
Eva
Liddell
In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007
Would Look Like
Website
of the Day
Propaganda:
Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by
Theodor Geisel
Sept.
15-16, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The General Came to Washington
Vicente
Navarro
How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's
Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy
Mike
Whitney
Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch
Herman
Mindshaftgap
Has There Ever Been a Surge?
If so, Has it a Future?
Ellen
Cantarow
Girls! Music! Palestine!
Jordan
Flaherty
K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the
N.O.P.D.
Zachary
Hurwitz
Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development
September
14, 2007
Debbie
Nathan
New York Times reporter was a member
of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing
as online predator"
Franklin
Lamb
Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later
Patrick
Cockburn
Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of
Abu Risha
Farzana
Versey
The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon
Alan
Farago
This is Florida, Epicenter of the
Housing Bust and of Public Corruption
Hank
Edson
Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache
September
13, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions
to Iraqi Official
Scott
Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot
The Barksdale Nukes
Andy
Worthington
Guantánamo: "Ghost"
Prisoners Speak At Last
Michael
Baney
Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has
Death Squad Past
Dr.
Susan Block
Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern?
September
12, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
American Economy: RIP
Stan
Goff
The Petraeus Report
William
Blum
When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting
the War Can End It.
Manuel
Garcia
Forgetting 9/11
Debbie
Nathan
Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the
Big Time
September
11, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fakery of General Petraeus
Iain
Boal
Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty,
Apocalypse
Michael
Dickinson
Osama on 9/11
Guerry
Hoddersen
Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken
Bill
Hatch
Irish Politics in Old Time California
Gary
Leupp
The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti
Website
of the Day
Elisa Salasin's
"My September 11th"
September
10, 2007
Uri
Avnery
A Big Victory Against the Wall
Patrick
Cockburn
Petraeus's Closet
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
Screwing Up In Iraq
David
Michael Green
Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified
to be the GOP's Nominee
Pius
Adesanmi
A Solidarity Letter to a Victim
of Michael Vick
Betty
Schneider
How to Deal With Sex Offenders
September
8 / 9, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Will the US Really Bomb Iran?
Saul
Landau
The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire
Ismael
Hossein-Zadeh
Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars
Ray
McGovern
Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq
Matthew
Abraham
Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul
Alan
Farago
The Governor and the Growth Machine
Christopher
Brauchli
Grand Old Party Animals
Rannie
Amiri
Battle of the Camps
Fred
Gardner
Will Snoops Get Stopped?
James
L. Secor
B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale
Missy
Comley Beattie
Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now?
Ben
Tripp
Still in the Clover
Francis
Boyle
The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show
Joe
Allen and Paul D'Amato
Jason Bourne vs. James Bond
Website
of the Weekend
Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above
September 7, 2007
Robert
Fantina
Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality
John
Ross
Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain
James
Brooks
The Occupation Within
Russell
Mokhiber
Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability
Joshua
Frank
The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy
John
Walsh
On the Green Party
Mark
Brenner
New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices
Mike
Ferner
"I Will Salute No More Forever"
Website
of the Day
Help Save Osny Zachary's Life
September
6, 2007
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden
Hand
Allan
J. Lichtman
When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ...
Norman
Solomon
The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman
Yifat
Susskind
Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the
Miskito Coast
Catherine
Fenton
Why I Am Going to the Protest
Laura
Santina
Can the War Machine be Contained?
Farzana
Versey
Fission Kashmir
Yves
Engler
Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of
Industry to Pay
Kelly
Overton
Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist?
Michael
Simmons
One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky
Crumb
Website
of the Day
Dams and Genocide in Guatemala
September
5, 2007
Stan
Goff
The End Begins
Michael
Dickinson
Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer
Matthew
Abraham
Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students:
a Defining Moment
Patrick
Cockburn
The Basra Debacle
Dave
Lindorff
Beware the Wounded Beast
Paul
Craig Roberts
Who Are the Fanatics?
Clifton
Ross
Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity
Elizabeth
Schulte
Katrina's Forgotten Refugees
Joseph
Grosso
Labor Day in New York City
Ben
Terrall
Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco
Website
of the Day
A Guide to Narco Dollars
September
4, 2007
Jean
Bricmont
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking
Iran
Patrick
Cockburn
Cut and Run in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime
Tom
Kerr
Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row
Gary
Leupp
The Case of Jose Maria Sison
Sonja
Karkar
The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine
Heather
Gray
The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal
Silence of Billy Graham
Fidel
Castro
The Super-Revolutionaries
Jackie
Corr
Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand
Sunsara
Taylor
Katrina and the Progress of the System
Website
of the Day
Colombia Journal
September
3, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
Brits Flee from Basra
Eamon
McCann
Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes
Joshua
Frank
The End of the Green Party?
Chris
Floyd
Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph
Marjorie
Cohn
A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans
Walter
Brasch
The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in
Iraq
Matt
Reichel
Redefining the American Dream
Website
of the Day
Don't Get Fooled Again
September
1 / 2, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Entrapment Snares Larry Craig
Andy
Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
Saul
Landau
The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five
David
Keen
An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care
Services
Diana
Johnstone
Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket
George
Longstreth, MD
& Karen Longstreth, RN
The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank
Linda
M. Woolf
A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights
Ralph
Nader
Wrapping the World with Advertising
Fred
Gardner
The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD
Ben
Tripp
Enquiry in America Today
David
Michael Green
American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut
Missy
Comley Beattie
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't
Learned About Tolerance
Michael
Dickinson
Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana
Paul
Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark
Ron
Jacobs
A Sports Nation of Millions
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z
|
September
27, 2007
An Opening Shot
for War on Iran?
Why
Did Israel Attack Syria?
By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth
Israel's air strike on northern Syria
earlier this month should be understood in the context of events
unfolding since its assault last summer on neighboring Lebanon.
From the leaks so far, it seems
that more than half a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Syrian
airspace to drop munitions on a site close to the border with
Turkey. We also know from the US media that the raid occurred
in close coordination with the White House. But what was the
purpose and significance of the attack?
It is worth recalling that, in the wake of Israel's month-long
war against Lebanon a year ago, a prominent American neoconservative,
Meyrav Wurmser, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney's recently
departed Middle East adviser, explained that the war had dragged
on because the White House delayed in imposing a ceasefire. The
neocons, she said, wanted to give Israel the time and space to
expand the attack to Damascus.
The reasoning was simple: before an attack on Iran could be countenanced,
Hizbullah in Lebanon had to be destroyed and Syria at the very
least cowed. The plan was to isolate Tehran on these two other
hostile fronts before going in for the kill.
But faced with constant rocket fire from Hizbullah last summer,
Israel's public and military nerves frayed at the first hurdle.
Instead Israel and the US were forced to settle for a Security
Council resolution rather than a decisive military victory.
The immediate fallout of the failed attack was an apparent waning
of neocon influence. The group's program of "creative destruction"
in the Middle East -- the encouragement of regional civil war
and the partition of large states that threaten Israel -- was
at risk of being shunted aside.
Instead the "pragmatists" in the Bush Administration,
led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the new Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, demanded a change of tack. The standoff
reached a head in late 2006 when oilman James Baker and his Iraq
Study Group began lobbying for a gradual withdrawal from Iraq
-- presumably only after a dictator, this one more reliable,
had again been installed in Baghdad. It looked as if the neocons'
day in the sun had finally passed.
Israel's leadership understood the gravity of the moment. In
January 2007 the Herzliya conference, an annual festival of strategy-making,
invited no less than 40 Washington opinion-formers to join the
usual throng of Israeli politicians, generals, journalists and
academics. For a week the Israeli and American  delegates
spoke as one: Iran and its presumed proxy, Hizbullah, were bent
on the genocidal destruction of Israel. Tehran's development
of a nuclear program -- whether for civilian use, as Iran argues,
or for military use, as the US and Israel claim -- had to be
stopped at all costs.
While the White House turned uncharacteristically quiet all spring
and summer about what it planned to do next, rumors that Israel
was pondering a go-it-alone strike against Iran grew noisier
by the day. Ex-Mossad officers warned of an inevitable third
world war, Israeli military intelligence advised that Iran was
only months away from the point of no return on developing a
nuclear warhead, prominent leaks in sympathetic media revealed
bombing runs to Gibraltar, and Israel started upping the pressure
on several tens of thousands of Jews in Tehran to flee their
homes and come to Israel.
While Western analysts opined that an attack on Iran was growing
unlikely, Israel's neighbors watched nervously through the first
half of the year as the vague impression of a regional war came
ever more sharply into focus. In particular Syria, after witnessing
the whirlwind of savagery unleashed against Lebanon last summer,
feared it was next in line in the US-Israeli campaign to break
Tehran's network of regional alliances. It deduced, probably
correctly, that neither the US nor Israel would dare attack Iran
without first clobbering Hizbullah and Damascus.
For some time Syria had been left in no doubt of the mood in
Washington. It failed to end its pariah status in the post-9/11
period, despite helping the CIA with intelligence on al-Qaeda
and secretly trying to make peace with Israel over the running
sore of the occupied Golan Heights. It was rebuffed at every
turn.
So as the clouds of war grew darker in the spring, Syria responded
as might be expected. It went to the arms market in Moscow and
bought up the displays of anti-aircraft missiles as well as anti-tank
weapons of the kind Hizbullah demonstrated last summer were so
effective at repelling Israel's planned ground invasion of south
Lebanon.
As the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld reluctantly
conceded earlier this year, US policy was forcing Damascus to
remain within Iran's uncomfortable embrace: "Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad finds himself more dependent on his Iranian counterpart,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than perhaps he would like."
Israel, never missing an opportunity to wilfully misrepresent
the behavior of an enemy, called the Syrian military build-up
proof of Damascus' appetite for war. Apparently fearful that
Syria might initiate a war by mistaking the signals from Israel
as evidence of aggressive intentions, the Israeli prime minister,
Ehud Olmert, urged Syria to avoid a "miscalculation".
The Israeli public spent the summer braced for a far more dangerous
repeat of last summer's war along the northern border.
It was at this point -- with tensions simmeringly hot -- that
Israel launched its strike, sending several fighter planes into
Syria on a lightning mission to hit a site near Dayr a-Zawr.
As Syria itself broke the news of the attack, Israeli generals
were shown on TV toasting in the Jewish new year but refusing
to comment.
Details have remained thin on the ground ever since: Israel imposed
a news blackout that has been strictly enforced by the country's
military censor. Instead it has been left to the Western media
to speculate on what occurred.
One point that none of the pundits and analysts have noted was
that, in attacking Syria, Israel committed a blatant act of aggression
against its northern neighbor of the kind denounced as the "supreme
international crime" by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.
Also, no one pointed out the obvious double standard applied
to Israel's attack on Syria compared to the far less significant
violation of Israeli sovereignty by Hizbullah a year earlier,
when the Shia militia captured two Israel soldiers at a border
post and killed three more. Hizbullah's act was widely accepted
as justification for the bombardment and destruction of much
of Lebanon, even if a few sensitive souls agonized over whether
Israel's response was "disproportionate". Would these
commentators now approve of similar retaliation by Syria?
The question was doubtless considered unimportant because it
was clear from Western coverage that no one -- including the
Israeli leadership -- believed Syria was in a position to respond
militarily to Israel's attack. Olmert's fear of a Syrian "miscalculation"
evaporated the moment Israel did the maths for Damascus.
So what did Israel hope to achieve with its aerial strike?
The stories emerging from the less gagged American media suggest
two scenarios. The first is that Israel targeted Iranian supplies
passing through Syria on their way to Hizbullah; the second that
Israel struck at a fledgling Syrian nuclear plant where materials
from North Korea were being offloaded, possibly as part of a
joint nuclear effort by Damascus and Tehran.
(Speculation that Israel was testing Syria's anti-aircraft defences
in preparation for an attack on Iran ignores the fact that the
Israeli air force would almost certainly choose a flightpath
through friendlier Jordanian airspace.)
How credible are these two scenarios?
The nuclear claims against Damascus were discounted so quickly
by experts of the region that Washington was soon downgrading
the accusation to claims that Syria was only hiding the material
on North Korea's behalf. But why would Syria, already hounded
by Israel and the US, provide such a readymade pretext for still
harsher treatment? Why, equally, would North Korea undermine
its hard-won disarmament deal with the US? And why, if Syria
were covertly engaging in nuclear mischief, did it alert the
world to the fact by revealing the Israeli air strike?
The other justification for the attack was at least based in
a more credible reality: Damascus, Hizbullah and Iran undoubtedly
do share some military resources. But their alliance should be
seen as the kind of defensive pact needed by vulnerable actors
in a Sunni-dominated region where the US wants unlimited control
of Gulf oil and supports only those repressive regimes that cooperate
on its terms. All three are keenly aware that it is Israel's
job to threaten and punish any regimes that fail to toe the line.
Contrary to the impression being created in the West, genocidal
hatred of Israel and Jews, however often Ahmadinejad's speeches
are mistranslated, is not the engine of these countries' alliance.
Nonetheless, the political significance of the justifications
for the Israeli air strike is that both neatly tie together various
strands of an argument needed by the neocons and Israel in making
their case for an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office in
early 2009. Each scenario suggests a Shia "axis of evil",
coordinated by Iran, that is actively plotting Israel's destruction.
And each story offers the pretext for an attack on Syria as a
prelude to a pre-emptive strike against Tehran -- launched either
by Washington or Tel Aviv -- to save Israel.
That these stories appear to have been planted in the American
media by neocon fanatics like John Bolton is warning enough --
as is the admission that the only evidence for Syrian malfeasance
is Israeli "intelligence", the basis of which cannot
be questioned as Israel is not officially admitting the attack.
It should hardly need pointing out that we are again in a hall
of mirrors, as we were during the period leading up to America's
invasion of Iraq and have been during its subsequent occupation.
Bush's "war on terror" was originally justified with
the convenient and manufactured links between Iraq and al-Qaeda,
as well as, of course, those WMDs that, it later turned out,
had been destroyed years earlier. But ever since Tehran has invariably
been the ultimate target of these improbable confections.
There were the forged documents proving both that Iraq had imported
enriched uranium from Niger to manufacture nuclear warheads and
that it was sharing its nuclear know-how with Iran. And as Iraq
fell apart, neocon operatives like Michael Ledeen lost no time
in spreading rumors that the missing nuclear arsenal could still
be accounted for: Iranian agents had simply smuggled it out of
Iraq during the chaos of the US invasion.
Since then our media have proved that they have no less of an
appetite for such preposterous tales. If Iran's involvement in
stirring up its fellow Shia in Iraq against the US occupation
is at least possible, the same cannot be said of the regular
White House claims that Tehran is behind the Sunni-led insurgencies
in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few months ago the news media served
up "revelations" that Iran was secretly conspiring
with al-Qaeda and Iraq's Sunni militias to oust the US occupiers.
So what purpose does the constant innuendo against Tehran serve?
The latest accusations should be seen as an example of Israel
and the neocons "creating their own reality", as one
Bush adviser famously observed of the neocon philosophy of power.
The more that Hizbullah, Syria and Iran are menaced by Israel,
the more they are forced to huddle together and behave in ways
to protect themselves -- such as arming -- that can be portrayed
as a "genocidal" threat to Israel and world order.
Van Creveld once observed that Tehran would be "crazy"
not to develop nuclear weapons given the clear trajectory of
Israeli and US machinations to overthrow the regime. So equally
Syria cannot afford to jettison its alliance with Iran or its
involvement with Hizbullah. In the current reality, these connections
are the only power it has to deter an attack or force the US
and Israel to negotiate.
But they are also the evidence needed by Israel and the neocons
to convict Syria and Iran in the court of Washington opinion.
The attack on Syria is part of a clever hustle, one designed
to vanquish or bypass the doubters in the Bush Administration,
both by proving Syria's culpability and by provoking it to respond.
Condoleezza Rice, it emerged at the weekend, wants to invite
Syria to attend the regional peace conference that has been called
by President Bush for November. There can be no doubt that such
an act of détente is deeply opposed by both Israel and
the neocons. It reverses their strategy of implicating Damascus
in the "Shia arc of extremism" and of paving the way
to an attack on the real target: Iran.
Syria, meanwhile, is fighting back, as it has been for some time,
with the only means available: the diplomatic offensive. For
two years Bashar al-Assad has been offering a generous peace
deal to Israel on the Golan Heights that Tel Aviv has refused
to consider. This week, Syria made a further gesture towards
peace with an offer on another piece of territory occupied by
Israel, the Shebaa Farms. Under the plan, the Farms -- which
the United Nations now agrees belongs to Lebanon, but which Israel
still claims is Syrian and cannot be returned until there is
a deal on the Golan Heights -- would be transferred to UN custody
until the dispute over its sovereignty can be resolved.
Were either of Damascus' initiatives to be pursued, the region
might be looking forward to a period of relative calm and security.
Which is reason enough why Israel and the neocons are so bitterly
opposed. Instead they must establish a new reality -- one in
which the forces of "creative destruction" so beloved
of the neocons engulf yet more of the region. For the rest of
us, a simpler vocabulary suffices. What is being sold is catastrophe.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth,
Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood
and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State"
published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States
from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
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How the Press Led
the US into War
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The Secret
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of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
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Cassidy
on Tour
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"The Case Against
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Michael
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Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism
The Occupation
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Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed
Bruce Springsteen On Tour
By Dave Marsh
The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced
as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"
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