What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Special Issue: the Collapse of America
Paul Craig
Roberts gives CounterPunchers the definitive data on what is
happening to jobs in America. Not just blue collar jobs. Middle-class,
white collar jobs. Roberts'
stunning probe is the first true picture of what the U.S. economy
is fast becoming and of the savage class wars that lie ahead.
Plus Mike
Ferner on what it really means to investigate war crimes in Iraq. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers
each month! But
remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the
print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
On August 6, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and President George W. Bush pieced together (with France's
blessing) a toothless UN Security Council resolution on Lebanon.
The resolution does not even call for Israel's withdrawal from
its neighboring Arab sovereign state. In so doing, the U.S. gave
its imperial partner, Israel, a green light to continue its carnage.
U.S. fingerprints were already
all over Israel's war on Lebanon, graphically illustrated by
the July 30th massacre of more than 60 civilians at Qana. Israel
bombed Qana with U.S.-made F-16 fighter planes, while a bomb
fragment found at the Qana bombing site read, "For use on
MK-84, Guided Bomb BSU-37/B"-produced by the Boeing corporation
to convert MK-84s into precision bombs. Like the bombs, this
war is "made in the USA."
Lebanon is just the latest
of the U.S.' many fronts in its "war on terror," now
approaching its fifth anniversary. Yet, despite its ferocity,
this war is proving to be an abysmal failure for U.S. imperialism-in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and also in its proxy wars in Palestine
and Lebanon. Perhaps for this reason, the civilian death toll
has risen sharply in this latest phase-largely dependent on aerial
bombardment aimed at destroying the "enemy", be they
Taliban in Afghanistan, "insurgents" in Iraq, Hamas
fighters in Gaza or the Hezbollah resistance in Lebanon.
Lebanese civilian deaths, one-third
of them children, now top 800 (the figure is likely much higher,
given the number of corpses still buried underneath the rubble
of destroyed buildings) with a million displaced, while Iraqis are being killed
at a rate of more than 100 per day according to journalist Patrick
Cockburn.
In Southern Afghanistan, at
least 600 of the 1,100 deaths this year have been civilians,
more than at any time since the U.S.' war on Afghanistan in late
2001, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission
(AIHRC).
Israel's onslaught against
Gaza has been all but ignored by the U.S. media. But in July
alone, the Israeli military killed 163 Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip, including roughly half who were not involved in any military
hostilities, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem reported.
Palestinian deaths in July numbered the highest of any month
since April 2002.
Operation
failure
Yet Israel's military bombardments
of Lebanon and Gaza are failing in their aims, as are the U.S.'
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan-and for the same reasons.
The parallels are too striking to ignore.
Assuming that military superiority
alone would ensure the submission of a conquered population has
proven a grave miscalculation-as it did for the U.S. in Vietnam.
On the contrary, in each case, the would-be conquered populations
have resisted with surprising force. Hezbollah fighters, most
recently, have succeeded in humiliating Israel, merely by preventing
a quick Israeli victory.
As former Jerusalem Post
editor Bret Stephens remarked in the Wall Street Journal,
"So far, Israel has nothing to show for its efforts Israel
is headed for the greatest military humiliation in its history."
Israel's new war on Lebanon
has backfired, greatly increasing Hezbollah's support among the
Lebanese population, including Christians. A recent opinion
poll by the Center for Research and Information in Beirut, 87
percent of all Lebanese support Hezbollah's resistance against
Israel-including 80 percent of Christians, 80 percent of Druze
respondents, and 89 percent of Sunnis.
The war against Lebanon was
designed to isolate Hezbollah-but has achieved the opposite.
Hezbollah's standing has not only risen inside Lebanon but all
over the Middle East. This is not a religious, but an anti-imperialist,
resistance. As Jwayya villager Sayyid Abu Ali told Washington
Post reporters, "The [Israeli] aggression gives birth
to resistance."
Do not expect, however, either
the U.S. or Israel to retreat at this juncture. The stakes are
too high for both, and neither can back down because humiliation
at the hands of a resistance movement spells imperial defeat.
In all likelihood, the war on terror will expand to include
new targets-including possibly Syria, and more likely, Iran.
As Australian journalist Ghali
Hassan noted, "In fact the current Israeli aggression on
Lebanon a defenseless nation is designed to coerce
not only the Lebanese people to rise up against Hezbollah, but
also to blackmail other nations and to use the war as a rehearsal
for a region-wide war against Iran or Syria.
All roads
lead to Tehran
The U.S. has never forgiven
Iran for the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the pro-U.S.
Reza Shah Pahlavi, replacing him with an anti-U.S. Islamic regime.
In the 1980s, the U.S. prevented an Iranian victory in its war
against Iraq, by first backing Saddam Hussein in the conflict,
and later by arming both sides in the conflict. As one former
Reagan administration official put it, "[Saddam] Hussein
is a bastard. But at the time he was our bastard." The U.S.
helped turn the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in Iraq's favor-knowing
that Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran, yet supplying
a wide range of arms to Iraq, while preventing arms from reaching
Iran.
Condoleezza Rice's recent declaration
that the Lebanon crisis signals the "birth-pangs" of
a new Middle East order is directed at Iran, the biggest threat
to U.S. dominance in the region.
As conservative columnist Charles
Krauthammer commented, "America wants, America needs, a
decisive Hezbollah defeat. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a
huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran
would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish
itself as the regional superpower."
In contrast, as journalist
Tamim Al-Barghouti argues, for Arabs and Muslims in the region,
Hezbollah, as an indigenous resistance movement, "represents
an all powerful example to Arabs and Muslims who have been longing
to regain some of the dignity they lost at the hands of their
leaders, who look more like employees in the American bureaucracy
than heads of independent states."
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
