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April 5, 2002
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Sharon's
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April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
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Mike Leon
Rightwing
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Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
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Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
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An
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Sting of Stings
Tzaporah
Ryter
Under
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America's Bravest
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Of
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The Siege of Bethlehem
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The
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April 2, 2002
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Murdering Arafat?
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Is
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Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
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Bullying
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Farce and Terror
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Let's
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April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
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Peace
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Bloodshed in Palestine:
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Tennessee's
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The Making of Exile
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DeskScan:
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Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
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March 31, 2002
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Last
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Lies Leaders Tell When
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The Year
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What Price Oslo?
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March 22, 2002
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Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
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March 20, 2002
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April 5, 2002
The "Axis of Evil" Cabal
and
the Case of Iran
By Fareed Marjaee
" A visitor from Mars to the UN
headquarter in 1985 would have found it difficult to decide,
after listening to ambassadors Jeane Kirkpatrick and Benjamin
Netanyahu, which of the two represented the United States and
which Israel."
Leon T. Hadar, a former UN bureau chief
of the Jerusalem Post
Exactly, what is behind the unexpected phrase--"Axis
of Evil"--that seemingly has surprised observers world
round? Was it a mere faux pas, or the weathervane for a new
Middle East policy? With the arrival of new actors, and the
new militant political culture at the Pentagon, is the Department
of Defense preempting the State Department in selective foreign
policy matters, such as the negotiation of key international
treaties and the US Middle East policy?
Is the formulation and conduct of foreign
policy an open and accessible process to the public at large?
Should American foreign policy be seen as all one piece? Or,
at the bureaucratic-market-place of ideas, is it pulled in
different directions by diverse constituencies? Are architects
of foreign policy and "experts" a monolithic crowd?
Does ideology play a role in this enterprise, at a cost to long-term
strategic policy?
In the periphery and in the Gulf region,
there may have been a naive understanding that, historically,
a Republican administration with its oil company constituents
can consistently provide a more pragmatic and conducive climate
to resolve Middle East issues. Yet, the issue is not so linear,
it is considerably more complex. In reality, since the "Reagan
Revolution," Republican administrations have also been
pregnant with a cohesive, yet relatively little known phenomenon
called Neo-con (Neo-conservatism)--a political movement legible
to the Washington elite insider, yet, invisible to the general
public. This political movement is a dense web of affiliates
that is present in numerous spheres and active in different
social domains.
As a whole, the radical right had been
striving to appropriate the September 11th atrocities and to
push forward several extremist agendas on the domestic front
and in foreign policy. While initially the stated US government
(State Department) objective after Sept 11th was the pursuit
of those responsible for the terrorist attack and to locate
and destroy the Al-Qaida terrorist network, there were right
wing policy advisors with certain agendas intended to widen
the scope of the US initiative. There is the impression that
the policy advisors brought in by the Bush/Cheney team, anchored
around the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Security
Council (N.S.C.), struggled to add an Israeli-right-wing wish
list to the agenda. A study of these policy advisors illustrates
a Neo-con ideological affiliation and demeanor. This clique
is not the result of an accidental club of "experts."
Historically, and principally, ever since its inception in the
late 60's it has focused on the issues of foreign policy, Pax-Zionica
through Pax-Americana (more of that later).
A Neo-con activist, Michael Ledeen, holds
the Freedom Chair at The American Enterprise Institute. In the
Reagan administration he served as an adviser to Oliver North
on the National Security Council. In his column last year ("Time
for a Good, Old-Fashioned Purge" National Review Online,
March 8, 2001), Ledeen had ask the Bush team to purge the "environmental
whackos," "the radical feminazis" to " foreign-policy
types on the National Security Council Staff and throughout
State, CIA, and Defense, who are still trying to create Bill
Clinton's legacy in the Middle East..."
For several months after the September
11th tragedy, a dispute ensued between the State Department
and the Neo-con policy assets in other agencies such as DoD
and N.S.C. The recent civilian leadership of the DoD includes
such right-wing hawks as Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of
Defense; Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's third-highest official,
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; and Richard Perle, Chief
of the Defense Policy Board. These officials are not agendaless;
their agenda-sketch echoes Neo-con political views and program.
On the other side, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his aides
Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State) and Richard Haas
(Chief of Policy Planning) and the Near East Bureau of the State
Department seem to have a strategically more global and regional
perspective on the issues. They had been successfully engaged
with Iran in the war with Taliban in the context of the 6+2
Group in Bonn, leading up to the possibility of a thaw in US-Iran
relations and a rapprochement.
A number of experts such as Gary Sick,
the Acting Director of the Middle East Institute who served
in N.S.C. under Ford, Reagan and Carter, view the deliberate
utterance of the phrase "Axis of Evil" in the President's
State of the Union address as the triumph of DoD over the Department
of State , thereby allowing the DoD agenda to come to the forefront.
Not surprisingly, David Frum, the author of the address, had
been associated with the Neo-con movement and the journal The
Weekly Standard. What the recent thrust entailed was an agenda
that went beyond Al-Qaida and those responsible for the actual
September 11th attack. It intended to shift the paradigm, and
create a linkage with other international issues, most of which
concern Israel, such as the proliferation of Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD) in three named "rogue states," and
in the case of Iran, support for Hamas and the Hizbollah of
Lebanon.
This nexus of the WTC tragedy on September
11th, and the issue of WMD in Iran and other "rogue nations,"
as the new expanded objective of the war on terrorism, does
not seem like a smooth and reasonable transition to some policymakers
and Middle East observers. In the case of Iran, it was noted
that the government had claimed that they have always been
open to inspections by the international non-proliferation bodies.
Moreover, Gary Sick differs with Zalmay Khalilzad, the current
director of Near East/Southwest Asia in the N.S.C., that Iran
had been destabilizing the current Afghan government (Ibid).
The phrase "Axis of Evil" had
puzzled those observers who clearly could see its implications
in the internal political situation of Iran, as complex as it
is; that is, weakening the hand of Reformist President Khatami
and the Reform movement at large. But survival of Khatami's
democratic movement may not be a priority to some. Patrick Clawson,
Director of Research at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, claims Bush was not trying to influence Iranian domestic
politics so much as putting the world on notice that Iran's
leaders have to change course. In the final analysis, the WMD
hardware does not seem to matter as much as the political positioning
of the regime.
The Neo-con elements associated with
the right wing think-tank institutes saw "momentous possibilities"
in the Axis of Evil phraseology and were quick to celebrate
the State of the Union address in their writings and to chastise
Secretary Powell. In numerous editorials, William Kristol of
the right-wing Weekly Standard openly criticized Powell's position
before and after the State of the Union address and his position
on war. (Bush v. Powell, 9, 24, 2001; Bush Doctrine Unfolds,
3, 04, 2002). Again, Michael Ledeen in a more recent column
("Iran and the Axis of Evil" National Review Online,
March 4, 2002) reprimanded Powell because his position on Iran
was not adequately belligerent. Reuel Marc Gerecht, also of
the American Enterprise Institute, in a Weekly Standard article
(4), dismisses Secretary Powell's "pragmatist" approach,
and states "...this detentist view of commerce and politics
still has currency in establishment circles." Gerecht goes
further and berates Le Monde Diplomatic and the Near East bureau
of the State Department as having the same reaction to the State
of the Union address as the speaker of Iran's Majlis, Ayatollah
Karroubi! As the logical extension of this sentiment, Gerecht
maintains that unless Iran's regime falls, its penchant for
unconventional weaponry "will not evanesce." This
myopic analysis makes the presumption with certainty that a
secular democratic government in Iran--as opposed to an Islamic
democratic one--would not have the inclination to seek strategic
parity with the client states in the region.
The Economist reports on Pentagon's number
two man, Paul Wolfowitz, and his "enthusiasm for changing
governments." The piece detects Mr. Wolfowitz's 'fingerprints'
all over the State of the Union speech ("Paul Wolfowitz
velociraptor," The Economist, Feb. 9, 2002, p 30). Since
the State of the Union address and the perceived threat of
"rogue nations," the Axis of Evil parlance creates
a hype and a psychological state of belligerence that would
accommodate and support dramatic increases in defense spending.
Accordingly, this year's Pentagon budget was substantially expanded.
Moreover, the Missile Defense Program which was looming in the
background seems to be back on the table (Sick, op. cit.)
Neo-cons Deconstructed;
Genesis
According to Hadar the major figures
of the Movement were initially former Trotskyites, people like
Irving Kristol, later contributor to the Wall Street Journal;
Norman Podhoretz; the present editor of Commentary--a bastion
of Neoconservatism; Democratic Party activist, Ben Wattenberg;
Midge Dector, wife of Podhoretz, with Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld served as officers of Committee for the Free World.
This Neo-con core was later joined by other Cold Warriors and
pro-Israeli advocates such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Walt and Eugene Rostow, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams
(Podhoretz's son-in-law), Kenneth Adelman, Max Kampelman (aide
to Senator Hubert Humphrey) and, of course, Michael Ledeen.
(A good number of them in the Bush/Cheney team are reincarnates
of the Reagan administration).
Israel became a central cause for these
Neo-cons; and, as Hadar observed, the pivotal axiom was that
"only a militarily strong and perpetually interventionist
America can guarantee the security of Israel." (Hadar,
op. cit.) The civil rights and social justice ambiance of the
60's movements had influenced the philosophy of the Democratic
Party, hence making the rhetoric and platform potentially susceptible
to recognition of self-determination for all peoples which may
have included Palestinian rights. After all, at this stage,
the Vietnam War was being criticized on moral grounds. By virtue
of George McGovern representing the antiwar (Vietnam)-liberal
forces within the Democratic Party in 1972, the Neo-cons mobilized
support for Henry (Scoop) Jackson who possessed Cold War, pro-Israel
credentials in the party. As a counterforce to the McGovern
victory in 1972, the Neo-cons formed the Coalition for a Democratic
Majority (CDM) in 1973. Later on, Richard Perle and Elliot
Abrams were to become top aids to Senator Jackson. President
Jimmy Carter did not include many of the CDM members in his
administration. Certain elements of his foreign policy agenda--improving
the US-Soviet relationship and addressing the Palestinian matter--gave
the Neo-cons serious pause. Whereas previously they were drifting
toward the Republican Party, at this juncture, with a sense
of grievance, the Neo-cons considered crossing the floor and
moving to the Republican Party which would undoubtedly welcome
the Neo-con intellectual prowess and media connections, and,
in fact, did. (Ibid)
Thus a marriage of convenience took place.
The CDM Neo-con members helped shape Ronald Reagan's agenda
and, in return, because their primary concerns and interests
revolved around external issues and hegemony, they were rewarded
with top foreign policy positions in his administration. The
top brass included Jeane Kirkpartick (contributor to Commentary),
Kenneth Adleman, Director of Arms Control; Richard Perle became
the Assistant Secretary of Defense; Richard Pipes (of Harvard)
was assigned to N.S.C., and Elliot Abrams, the rising star,
was placed as Assistant Secretary of State.
From their top positions, they encouraged
the Reagan administration to view the indigenous issues such
as the Palestinian statehood/nationalism, the Nicaraguan revolution,
and the South African and the Middle East conflicts from the
prism of a Cold War context--international communism and Soviet
expansionism were behind most 3rd -World struggles. Initially,
for reasons of ideology, most of the old-guard conservatives
of the Barry Goldwater-Richard Nixon types were weary of these
newcomers, but later came on board, accepted them and continued
to work with them. For some time now, Neo-con writers have appeared
in William F. Buckley's National Review. Segments of the more
traditional right, however, committed to conservative social
values had viewed the Neo-cons as closet liberals, and considered
their presence in the conservative movement as a hostile takeover.
The Old Right accused the Neo-cons for their over-preoccupation
with interventionist foreign policy and their indifference to
the size of government and the "Welfare State." They
object to the appropriation of the mantle of the conservative
movement by the Neo-cons. In the foreword to the 2nd edition
of Justin Raimondo's 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right:
The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, Patrick J. Buchanan
wrote: "With Reagan's triumph, the neocons came into their
own, into his government and his movement." Raimondo considers
the Neo-cons the "the War Party," or the cowbirds
of conservatism.
There have been diverse reactions to
the Neo-con phenomenon from the liberal and New Left corner
as well. Gore Vidal, the celebrated American writer, has been
known in his essays to take on political/social taboos. In an
historic essay titled, "The Empire Lovers Strike Back,"
[The Nation, March 22, 1986] he took aim at the elders of the
Neo-con wave; they in return landed him labels of anti-Semitism.
Vidal called the deans of the Movement "publicists for
Israel" or "fifth columnists;" he declared that
pro-Israel lobbyists "make common cause with the lunatic
fringe" in order to scare Americans into spending enormous
sums of money for defense against the Soviet Union and for support
of Israel.
In a way, the Neo-con establishment itself
is an axis of political-lobby/academic-cultural/media/defense-policy
network in pursuit of a clearly defined agenda.
The Neo-con
Orientalism, and Narrative
"Here Mr. McBryde paused. He wanted
to keep the proceedings as clean as possible, but Oriental Pathology,
his favourite theme, lay around him, and he could not resist
it." E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
In the post-September tragedy, there
appeared a curiosity, a spontaneous public discourse in an effort
to demystify the political, theological, cultural aspects of
Islam and Islamic movements. In contrast, meanwhile, a literature
began to resurface centered on a (dis)-Orientalism that has
been associated with the exoticization of Islamic societies
and Islamic history. There are cultural orientalists who possess
clear policy/political preferences; they tend to also polemicize
their scholarship to push for overt political agendas. The Neo-con
wave is more than political appointees and lobbies; it is also
a matter of culture and attitude. One of the most referred to
in the Neo-con ideological pursuits and literature is Bernard
Lewis, the semi-retired Princeton scholar. As pointed out above,
during the Reagan term and based on the Cold War Zeitgeist of
the time, the Neo-con propagandists encouraged the Israel-Palestinian
conflict to be seen in that light. After the end of the Cold
War, an Huntingtonian "Clash of Civilization" theory
struggles to dominate the discourse on East/West relations and
understandings; the sort of ethos that defamiliarizes and demonizes
"the other." Likewise, it carries over that dualistic
Manichean worldview. In this Gemeinschaft, the Muslim and Arab
world would replace the Soviet/red threat. And in this polarized
view of the world, Israel is presented as the bastion of the
West. On the occasion of reviewing Judith Miller's book for
The Nation ("A Devil Theory of Islam," Aug 12, 1996),
Edward Said wrote, "To demonize and dehumanize a whole
culture on the ground that it is (in Lewis's sneering phrase)
enraged at modernity is to turn Muslims into the objects of
a therapeutic, punitive attention."
Reuel Marc Gerecht, an admirer of Lewis,
is yet another Princeton "Orientalist" and a Neo-con
scholar at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. In
an interview with the Ha'aretz Magazine, he reveals, "I
was a passionate believer in the Cold War.... One of my professors
had ties with the agency and he put me in touch with them...."
(Ronen Bergman, "Their Man in Iran," Aug. 20, 1999).
As a CIA operations officer for seven years from 1987 to 1994,
Gerecht coordinated the network of agents in and outside Iran.
Although in his book "Know Thine Enemy" he finds the
Agency inept, it is possible that his agenda load was too heavy
for the Agency. Earlier in December, prior to the State of the
Union address, Gerecht stated in an interview with The Atlantic
(Unbound, Dec. 28, 2001) that "the only way to douse the
fires of Islamic radicalism is through stunning, overwhelming,
military force...." Ann Coulter, one of the right-wing
celebrities wrote "We should invade their countries, kill
their leaders and convert them to Christianity." ("This
Is War," National Review Online, September 13, 2001)
The Axis of Evil terminology may have
taken many by surprise, but a review of culturally-charged articles
from September 2001 to January 2002 in various journals such
as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and, of course, The
New Republic would illustrate that a "Clash of Civilization"
and estrangement of "the other culture" was in the
making. Alexander Cockburn once remarked metaphorically that
the offices of The New Republic in Washington are attached to
the back of the Israeli embassy. Although Neo-con writers such
as Richard Pipes, Daniel Pipes and Michael Ledeen are regular
contributors to such "mainstream" media as The Wall
Street Journal, the citadel of their journalism is publications
like The New Republic, Commentary, The Weekly Standard and The
Washington Times. William Safire in The New York Times and Charles
Krauthammer in The Washington Post carry the Neo-con torch,
deliberating issues. While conservative hawks have wide access
to the media hegemony created by moguls Rupert Murdoch and Conrad
Black (Hollinger International, Inc.), issues around the Middle
East and the proliferation of WMD seldom get an objective hearing.
In the fall of 2001, prior to the State
of the Union speech, there were initiatives on the part of some
right-wing forces that caused worry for the academia. The American
Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) in which Lynne Cheney,
wife of Vice President Cheney is involved, produced a document
titled "Defense of Civilization" in which it published
the names, colleges and statements of about 100 academics who
seemingly had been critical. Similarly, Martin Kramer of the
pro-Israel institute Washington Institute for Near East Policy
published the monograph "Ivory Towers on Sand" where
he blames the Middle East Studies in American academia for
'incorrect analysis' in not being able to "predict or explain"
Middle East politics, and questions continued Federal funding.
Even though the Neo-cons' institutional
incarnation was in the liberal Democratic Party, their reincarnation
nonetheless has been in right-wing WASP think-tank institutes
such as The Committee on Present Danger, The Committee for the
Free World, The Project for the New American Century, Heritage
Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute. A casual
study of the advisory boards and officers reveals the usual
Neo-con listings--William Kristol, son of Irving Kristol and
editor of The Weekly Standard; Carl Gershman, special councilor
to Jeane Kirkpatrick while at the UN, and president of the National
Endowment for Democracy which supports selective causes in
the Third World; Donald Rumsfeld; Vice President Cheney's Chief
of Staff, I. Lewis Libby; Newt Gingrich; William F. Buckley
Jr.; Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.
There exist in Washington many organizations
that are active on behalf of the American Jewish community and
Israel; but none have nearly the influence the Neo-cons have
in terms of lobbying impact on behalf of right-wing Israeli
hawks. In 1998, Fortune Magazine recognized the America Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as one of the most influential
lobbies in the country. In a recent piece in The Los Angeles
Times, Michael Massing describes in detail this lobbying powerhouse
located near Capital Hill, and asserts that the leadership personalities
"...have developed ready access to the US State Department,
Defense Department and National Security Council" ("Conservative
Jewish Groups Have Clout," March 10, 2002). While serving
as Senator, Hubert Humphrey's "Communist Control Act"
was drafted by his aide, Max Kampelman, one of the Neo-con wave
elders. Similarly, there was word around that AIPAC drafted
Senator DAmato's Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Graham E. Fuller,
a former vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council
for long-range forecasting at the CIA, writes "And efforts
to portray Iran with some analytical balance have grown more
difficult, crowded out by inflamed rhetoric and intense pro-Israeli
lobbying against Tehran in Congress.... Improved U.S. ties with
Iran should bring about a more balanced reckoning of just what
Iran is and is not." (5)
The Invisibles
Take Center Stage
It is no secret that Dick Cheney nominated
his old mentor Rumsfeld to the post of Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld
in turn brought Wolfowitz (who had been Cheney's right-hand
man when he ran the Pentagon) as his deputy. As hawkish veterans
of the Cold War, some of the Neo-con associates had understandably
become proficient in the issues of strategic nuclear arms and
national security; they had been critics of multilateral arms
agreements (detente), and were involved with policy institutes
as vehicles and proponents of those politics. As strong proponents
of Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) during
the Reagan administration, it is believed that they were instrumental
in the death of SALT II under the Carter administration (6).
This leads to what is known inside the
Beltway as the "Wolfowitz cabal." Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the new chief of the 18-member
advisory panel of Defense Policy Board, were both mentored
by arch-hawk nuclear strategist Albert Wohlseteller of the RAND
Corp. in the 1960's. While the Defense Policy Board is an advisory
panel, its new chief, Richard Perle, has an office in the E-Ring
of the Pentagon. Known as "the prince of darkness,"
he previously served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International
Security Policy in the Reagan Administration. In Seymour Hersh's
book on Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power, we learn that the
FBI wiretaps had heard Richard Perle--then foreign policy aide
to Senator Jackson--passing N.S.C. classified material to the
Israeli Embassy; this had infuriated Kissinger (8). Other additions
among the Wolfowitz circle are Douglas J. Feith; I. Lewis Libby,
Cheney's Chief of Staff; and, according to The Economist article,
the latter is "Wolfowitz's Wolfowitz." (op. cit.)
Douglas J. Feith, previously associated
with the Center for Security Policy (CSP), has been appointed
to the position of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. In
the Reagan administration, Feith had served as Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense and a Middle East specialist on the National
Security Council staff. Because he holds strong pro-Israel views
and is perceived as having a partisan position, Feith's appointment
to that policy post has been a matter of great concern for Arab-American
spokesmen. In 1996, Feith and Richard Perle co-authored a paper
for The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.
In that piece titled "A Clean Break: a New Strategy for
Securing the Realm," they advised Israeli leader Netanyahu
to halt the land for peace process.
If Elliot Abrams could serve as NSC's
senior director for democracy and human rights, then it is not
so bizarre to have John Bolton as Undersecretary of State for
Arms Control, and non-proliferation. Apparently Bolton, a Vice
President at the American Enterprise Institute, was forced
on the State Department. Earlier, the Institute had openly opposed
the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty that was
signed by the U. S. in 1988. In November 1999, Bolton wrote
a short piece for the American Enterprise Institute titled "Kofi
Annan's U.N. Power Grab"--"United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan has begun to assert that the U.N. Security
Council is 'the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force.'
If the United States allows that claim to go unchallenged, its
discretion in using force to advance its national interests
is likely to be inhibited in the future."
Neo-cons are not political novices and
seem to have little tolerance for dissenters; the N.S.C. is
not immune to this political culture either. In a New Yorker
article Seymour Hersh reports that several regional experts
left the NSC "after a series of policy disputes with the
civilian officials in the Pentagon" ("The Debate Within,"
March 11, 2002, p36). Zalmay Khalilzad has replaced Bruce Reidel
for the Middle East portfolio.
The Axis of Evil vocabulary may appear
novel, but clearly the grammar is familiar and legible. It translates
to a $48 billion increase in this year's Pentagon budget, up
to $379 billion annual--the largest defense spending increase
in more than two decades. In terms of strategic policy, it is
highly likely we may see the unilateral abandonment of the
1972 ABM Treaty, the abandonment of the goal of the formal implementation
of Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty START II, and a strong push
to pursue the controversial National Defense Initiative. The
recent Nuclear Posture Review is alarming to many in the sense
that it is changing deterrence to feasibility of nuclear application,
viewing unconventional arms almost in conventional terms, and
developing nuclear arsenals for possible use against non-nuclear
states. Whereas the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) does
not prohibit the US from targeting non-nuclear states, it has
historically pledged not to do so, extending what is known as
"a negative security assurance." Under the new regime,
the US is seriously considering not offering a negative security
assurance to non-nuclear states.
During the Reagan administration, the
extremist attitude of the Neo-con clique produced policy that
found pronouncements and support for "constructive engagement"
with Apartheid, support for the Contras in Nicaragua, Duvalier
(FRAP) of Haiti, the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, and the
proliferation of death squads in El Salvador, Honduras and
Guatemala.
The kind of social campaigns that do
not strive for wider solutions but are part of intensifying
hostilities only postpone and encourage future conflict. Many
experts believe that long term policy and national interest
should not be sacrificed by putting forth a clique agenda. Undue
influence of agenda-ridden hawkish ideologues has alarmed experts
and the policy community at large. There are those who believe
that this political culture has created an atmosphere that
obstructs any serious debate on the Middle East. To bulldoze
and elbow a one-sided policy over a long period may lead to
political/moral tipping point. Is this discourse deeper than
mere inter-agency disputes? Does this evolving discussion have
the potential of a Glasnost in the intellectual life and thus
the political life of America? Can Us-Iran rapprochement be
brought to conclusion without such Glasnost? Does Crown Price
Abdullah's initiative have a real chance? Is a comprehensive
and long-lasting peace in the Middle East possible before the
dawn of this Glasnost?
Fareed Marjaee
is an Urban Planner and researcher; previously, a member of
the Executive Committee of the New Democratic Party of the City
of Toronto. He can be reached at: Daavar2@yahoo.com
This article originally appeared on Payvand,
a website devoted to news about Iran.
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