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September
27, 2001
All Dressed Up
and No Place to Go
U.S.
forces are ready to strike
But where? At whom?
And on what scale?
By Steve Perry
The table is set, at least so far as
the tools of war are concerned; enormous quantities of American
men, machines, and ordnance now stand ready to strike at any
number of potential targets around the Middle East. Any day now
is the word from Washington. But meantime there is no public
sign that the Bush administration is any closer to plotting a
course past the many complications that attend its retaliation
for the September 11 bombings. Two things seem clear: Bush puts
a premium on acting soon, and bin Laden country in eastern Afghanistan
is a primary target. The rest, by all appearances, remains up
for grabs even on the eve of attack. Air strikes on Afghanistan?
Land war there? Secondary theaters of battle in Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Lebanon?
All those questions are being
weighed now, out of view of the public and the U.S.'s ostensible
allies, give or take Britain. You know the refrain: National
security and the exigencies of war demand the utmost secrecy.
In this case it means handing the administration a blank check
in the naming of enemies and targets. When Colin Powell intimated
a more moderate course by suggesting the U.S. would release its
evidentiary brief against bin Laden, he was quickly rebuked by
the president himself. So much for coalition-building, not to
mention the informed consent of the American citizenry.
So why hasn't Bush gone ahead?
For starters any initial strike has to include bin Laden, and
the U.S. apparently has no idea where he is at the moment-somewhere
in east central Afghanistan, they think, but without more specific
knowledge it's hard to cast an attack on Afghanistan as a mission
to get bin Laden. This is not a very big stumbling block in the
end. They would prefer to find him and kill him with a minimum
of wasted effort, for face-saving reasons; Bush does not want
another embarrassment like the one Clinton sustained in going
after bin Laden in 1998. But if it has to, the U.S. can simply
make up news regarding his whereabouts, the workings of intelligence
services being what they are. And it may well come to this, because
American forces face a fairly intractable deadline in the coming
of winter in Afghanistan. Snow is already falling in the Khyber
Pass, Britain's The Telegraph noted on Wednesday, and "ground
operations by special forces [will be] almost impossible in a
few weeks."
Winter in the Afghan mountains
is hardly the sharpest spur to quick military action. Pakistan,
the state most indispensable to the U.S. as a military staging
area and fly zone, is already in a state of near-revolt following
waves of anti-U.S. protests in the past week. The Musharraf government
likely will not stand for long in the event of a protracted U.S.
presence. Nor is the U.S. in a position to count on getting much
from its alliances with the moderate governments of the region.
The case of Saudi Arabia is emblematic: That country severed
all diplomatic ties with the Taliban on Tuesday, but not before
instructing the U.S. it would not be permitted to use its Saudi
air bases to mount attacks in Afghanistan. The Americans are
on a short fuse with their putative Arab allies, and Bush's refusal
to make public the evidence against bin Laden has only cut it
shorter.
The biggest wild card in all
this is Israel, though you would never know it from most of the
timorous think pieces in American media. Unless the Israelis
can be restrained from using the situation to press their advantage
against the Palestinians, any U.S. pretense at maintaining the
so-called coalition of moderate Arab states will collapse sooner
rather than later. And Israel, accustomed to the unconditional
love and heavy-handed support of its patron, is not inclined
to make accommodations. "Just look at what Mr. Sharon has
done since the bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon,"
wrote an editorialist in Wednesday's London Independent. "Immediately,
he intensified attacks on the Palestinians, thinking the West
would turn a blind eye. He sent his forces into the towns of
Jenin, Jericho and Ramallah, which are supposed to be under Palestinian
self-rule, launched helicopter missile assaults on the Gaza Strip
and tightened Israel's grip on mainly Arab east Jerusalem. Admittedly,
there were provocations for these actions, but they also suited
Mr. Sharon's temperamental desire to defeat the Palestinians
rather than negotiate with them."
Wednesday's resumption of peace
talks between Israel and the PLO was an entirely pro forma gesture;
no further meetings were scheduled and the two principals, Peres
and Arafat, refused so much as a glance at each other when they
shook hands for the cameras. Meanwhile Israel is openly lobbying
the U.S. to include Iran, Syria, and Lebanon-backers of Hamas
and Hezbollah forces-on its hit list of prospective military
targets.
And the Pentagon is inclined
to agree in principle, though the enemies of choice there tend
toward Iraq and Iran. For the past week-plus, there have been
regular dispatches in U.S. and U.K. papers detailing the split
in the Bush administration between a moderate Powell-led faction
and a band of Pentagon hawks led by defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. As mentioned here previously,
the Powell group wants to move slowly, cement alliances, and
limit the scope of initial military actions; the Pentagon crowd
wants to launch war on multiple fronts in quick succession. This
week the tilt has been decidedly to the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz side.
Bush's public reversal of Powell on Monday was not only a personal
slap; in flouting international calls for disclosure of the evidence
against bin Laden, it amounted to an embrace of the Pentagon
line that what the U.S. needs now in the Middle East is fewer
partners and more targets.
It's hard to believe Bush will
want to launch wars on multiple fronts as a first resort, given
the enormous difficulties he already faces in pursuing bin Laden
through the mountains of Afghanistan. Then again, how better
to distract attention from that likely fiasco than by resurrecting
efforts to get Saddam, or the sponsors of Hamas and Hezbollah?
CP
Steve Perry writes frequently for CounterPunch
and is a contributor to the excellent cursor.org
website, which offers incisive coverage of the current crisis.
He lives in Minneapolis, MN.
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