2006/08/31
Origens da turculência "libertadeira" - II
Em "MONARCHY AND WAR", Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn*
"(...) In February 1914, Mr. Wilson thought that the Mexicans would be much happier if, politically, they imitated the United States, which inturn had imitated France.71
This worried Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Minister. Between him and American Ambassador Walter Hines Page, a curious dialogue developed.
The theme was Mexican reluctance to adopt a full-fledged democracy, which theUnited States, after all, had fostered and abetted in Mexico even before they had supported Benito Juarez, the murderer of Emperor Maximilian.72
The exchange of opinions went as follows:
Grey: Suppose you have to intervene, what then?
Page: Make ’em vote and live by their decisions.
Grey: But suppose they will not so live?Page: We’ll go in again and make ’em vote again.
Grey: And keep this up for 200 years?
Page: Yes. The United States will be here for 200 year sand it can continue to shoot them for that little space till they learn to vote and rule themselves.73
______________________________________________________________
71 I often ask American audiences where in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution one finds the words “democracy” and “republic.” Their surprise is great when they learn that neither appears in either document. When I tell them that, according to Charles Beard, the Founding Fathers hated democracy more than Original Sin, they are surprised. Nor are they delighted when I tell them that after 1828, their country hadgone to the French School.
72 The Duce was given his Spanish first name by his anarchist father. It was Benito (instead of Benedetto) in honor of Benito Juarez, who had a monarch executed. The fasces, we must remember, are a republican symbol, and Fascism found its full realization only in the Republica Sociale Italiana, with the seat in Salo.
73 See Burton J. Hendrick, The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, vol. 1
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1925), p. 188."
Origens da turculência "libertadeira" - I
Detalhes e desastres da WWI:
"Because of our special guest from Austria, Karl von Habsburg, I want to add a footnote here relative to the settlement of World War I as it relates to the Habsburg Monarchy.
In his excellent book entitled Leftism Revisited, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn reveals that President Wilson probably was unaware of the wisdom of Disraeli’s words:
"The maintenance of the Austrian Empire is necessary to the independence and, if necessary, to the civilization and even to the liberties of Europe."
The book points out that President Wilson had as one of his main foreign-policy representatives a confirmed socialist preacher by the name of Reverend George Davis Herron.
The Habsburg Monarchy petitioned Wilson to negotiate a separate peace treaty in February of 1918, before the war ended later in November and sent as its representative Professor Heinrich Lammasch to meet with the American representative Reverend Herron.
They spent two days together and Professor Lammasch revealed the plan to create a federated political body which was entirely in keeping with one of Wilson ’s Fourteen Points; i.e., that individual nations (ethnic groups) would be "accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development."
The book states: During the night he [Herron] began to wrestle with this "temptation," as "Jacob wrestled with God near the Yabbok." By morning he knew that he had gained complete victory over himself; Lammasch had been nothing but an evil tempter. No! The Habsburg Monarchy had to go because the Habsburgs as such were an obstacle to progress, democracy, and liberty. Had they remained in power the whole war would have been fought in vain.[10]
Of course, one of the winners of the war, Great Britain, was allowed to keep its monarchy." A Century of War, By John V. Denson
2006/08/30
Fascismos
Capítulo "After 9/11":
* "The PATRIOT Act and its progeny are the most abominable, unconstitutional governmental assaults on personal freedom since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798" and "the most unpatriotic of the things that the Bush administration and this [Republican controlled] Congress could have visited upon us."
* "federal agents and local police can write their own search warrants, serve them on American financial institutions without the intervention of a judge, and obtain information about you without you even knowing it!" The PATRIOT Act "has allowed the government to circumvent completely the Fourth Amendment" and "makes it a crime – punishable by five years in jail – for the recipient of a self-written search warrant to tell anyone that he or she has received the search warrant."
* "The government can now . . . break into your house . . . steal your checkbook, put an electronic bug under your kitchen table, and make it look like it was a house burglary. It can even leave and not tell you or the local police what has happened."
* "President Bush does not recognize the constitutional limitations imposed on his office. His only concern is with victory over ‘the enemy,’ whoever that may be. "
PS: Among Judge Napolitano’s common sense recommendations:
* are abolition of the income tax ("the Sixteenth Amendment . . . should be abolished outright")
* same for the Seventeenth Amendment which called for the direct election of U.S. senators and a return to the system of appointing them by state legislatures; [Só na década da WWI é que os 2 Senadores por Estado passaram a ser eleitos directamente. Até lá eram apontados pelas legislaturas Estaduais. Devia ter permanecido assim.]
* "Thus, I would clarify the right of the states to secede from the Union," writes the judge from New Jersey, "losing all the benefits that come from membership [in the union], but regaining all the freedom membership has taken away".
Via: The Men Who Destroyed the Constitution by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Turculência "anti-islâmico-fascista"
* interview : "The Israel lobby and its influence has been a taboo subject for too long. It is very important for the national interest that this matter be discussed at length and in a serious way in the media and on Capitol Hill. Too much is at stake to continue treating the lobby and Israel like two elephants in the room."
* WP "Israel had been planning to strike at Hezbollah for months," he asserted. "Key Israelis had briefed the administration about their intentions."
Reaccção do anti-islamico-fascista Instapundit Glenn Reynolds: "MEARSHEIMER AND WALT: Idiots, or anti-semites?"
* Anwar: "This is the same Glenn Reynolds, a law professor for a third-rate university, who smeared Pope John Paul II as a "defender of pedophiles" for voicing concern for the rights of Palestinians, among His Holiness' other crimes – and whose predictions have been notable for their utter wrongness."
Tatcher e Reagan (revisionismo)
Reagan disse na televisão algo como: "Estamos numa posição dificil. Somos amigos de ambos os países e queremos manter continuar a manter relações com ambos e ultrapassar este conflito"
Nem moralismo ou maniqueismo do tipo "ditadura versus democracia", "Ocidente versus ...", apenas a aceitação de que uma disputa cuja fundamento se baseia nos restos que sobram de um Status Quo de um antigo Império, cuja discussão moral e ética é sempre ardilosa e contraditória - uma evoca um "status quo", o outro outro qualquer. Assim como Olivença deveria ser Português e porque não, um "causus bellis" para um conflito com Espanha?
Claro que Tatcher, no seu beligerante-retro-imperialismo simpático, não se coibiu de afundar um navio fora das àguas territoriais e a afastar-se das ilhas, com quase 300 soldados argentinos, porque, punha em risco "our boys". "Em risco" de quê é que não percebemos, dada a facilidade com que foi afundado.
Mas enfim, a senhora tem outras características dignas de nota. A sua recusa a entrar na EMU com bandas flutuantes era inteiramente acertada. Foi esse o motivo para ser traida pelos seus colegas. Mais tarde George Soros provou o quanto estúpido tinha sido essa entrada ao ganhar uma batalha especulativa contra o Banco Central Inglês. O seu anti-Super Estado Europeu faz falta.
Foi pena o erro político, não substancial da "poll tax". Uma taxa local deve ser de iniciativa local. Não imposta a partir de cima.
No Líbano, a presença de militares americanos tinha o pressuposto de ajudar a conter um conflito territorial entre duas partes. Quando uma das partes (Hezbollah) num atentado mata soldados, retira apenas - acertadíssimo, porque se queremos ajudar num conflito e uma das partes não o deseja, o melhor é não ajudar nenhum e deixá-los primeiro chegar a um entendimento mínimo.
Depois, podemos recordar que conseguiu a libertação dos reféns no Irão, em cima da tomada de posse do seu 1º mandato. O que aconteceu não é público, mas é evidente que negociou.
Passados 2 meses ganhou a re-eleição com a maior maioria republicana de sempre. A verdade é que, sejam quais tenham sido os seus defeitos, percebemos hoje que a sua contenção foi bastante real e realista, ainda que teha sido na sua adminstração que o golpe de Estado e quinta coluna do neo-conservantismo, preparava o seu ataque pelo controlo do estatismo internacionalista.
Comparado com hoje, onde o medo e histerismo, conjugado com a pretensão ao império moralista, contra perigos sem qualquer capacidade convencional, consegue justificar reavivar o militarismo-imperialismo de outros tempos...
I miss Reagan
Mais sobre "islamo-fascismo"
Unsurprisingly, it is neoconservatives, whose roots are in the Trotskyist-Social Democratic Left, who are promoting use of the term. Their goal is to have Bush stuff al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran into an “Islamofascist” kill box, then let SAC do the rest.
The term represents the same lazy, shallow thinking that got us into Iraq, where Americans were persuaded that by dumping over Saddam, we were avenging 9/11.
But Saddam was about as devout a practitioner of Islam as his idol Stalin was of the Russian Orthodox faith. (...) . Bin Laden loathed him and volunteered to fight him in 1991, if Saudi Arabia would only not bring the Americans in to do the fighting Islamic warriors ought to be doing themselves.
And whatever “Islamofascism” means, Syria surely is not it. It is a secular dictatorship Bush I bribed into becoming an ally in the Gulf War. The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Syria. In 1982, Hafez al-Assad perpetrated a massacre of the Brotherhood in the city of Hama that was awesome in its magnitude and horror.(...)
Hamas and Hezbollah have used terrorism, but like Begin’s Irgun and Mandela’s ANC, they have social and political agendas that require state power to implement. And once a guerrilla/terrorist movement takes over a state, it acquires state assets and interests that are then vulnerable to the U.S. military and economic power.(...)
“Islamofascism” should be jettisoned from Bush’s vocabulary. It yokes the faith of a billion people with an odious ideology. Imagine how Christians would have reacted had FDR taken to declaring Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy “Christo-fascist.”
If Mr. Bush does not want a war of civilizations, he will drop these propaganda terms that are designed to inflame passions rather than inform the public of the nature of the war we are in."
Not So Clean Break
"Israel bombed southern Lebanon on July 12 in response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah fighters. But the Israelis were said to have planned a military campaign weeks before the soldiers were kidnapped. According to Dr. John Pike, head of the Washington-based think tank Global Strategies, and my friend Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large of the Washington Times and UPI, Israel had briefed Washington about its concerns, and the U.S. had given Israel a green light to attack Hezbollah and push its troops into southern Lebanon. There was an agreement between Israel and Uncle Sam that Iranian nuclear plants would eventually have to be bombed. Once this was done, Iran would most likely order Hezbollah to attack Israel. Thus the U.S. and Israel agreed in secret that at some point before the attack on Iran, Hezbollah would have to be disarmed and that as soon as a pretext became available, Israel should use force.
(...) Speaking to the London Spectator recently, Netanyahu suggested that President Bush had assured him Iran will be prevented from going nuclear. I take him at his word. Netanyahu seems to be the main mover in America’s official adoption of the 1996 white paper “A Clean Break,” authored by him and American fellow neocons, which aimed to aggressively remake the strategic environments of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. As they say in boxing circles, three down, two to go.
The trouble, of course, is that the three are not down.
The U.S.-sponsored assault on Lebanon is looking a lot like the ill-fated Iraq invasion. In both cases we were told smart bombs would accomplish miracles. Not so. Stiff resistance on the ground and outrage throughout the world is the result.
The Bush doctrine of creating democracy in the Middle East with bombs will go down in history as the cruelest and craziest ever. A war on terror, as Bush calls everything he doesn’t agree with, cannot be won by a democratically elected government acting like a terrorist organization. (...)
The truth is that even friends of Israel—and there are many—do not believe for a moment that Hezbollah, Syria, or Iran really threaten Israel’s existence. Only a propagandist like John Podhoretz—“we should have killed many more Sunnis age 15 to 35”(...)"
"Voo 93"
2006/08/29
A linguagem do anti-"islamo-fascismo":
"(...) Here’s John Podhoretz, a slob of a man whose warlike rhetoric is matched only by his sloppy and unattractive physical appearance. He is writing in the Murdoch New York Post: ‘What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them? Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?’ Do you see, dear readers, what coarse rhetoric we’re up against back in the Land of the Depraved?
Even the civilised John Derbyshire, a Brit, writing in National Review, the magazine which gave me my start, wishes ‘we had rubbled Iraq’ in order to show our enemies we know how to punish them.(...)"
De facto lógica é irrefutável. Já era a lógica dos impetos quase materializados (thank god for Regan and Tatcher!) da lógica neo-cons na guerra fria: é preciso matá-los para os salvar.
Curiosidades: O que aconteceu à Prússia?
Wikipedia: in Treaty of Versailles
* the Prussian provinces Posen and West Prussia ... were returned to the reborn Poland
* West Prussia was given to Poland to provide free access to the sea, along with a sizeable German minority, creating the Polish corridor.
* the area of Soldau in East Prussia (railway station on the Warsaw-Gdańsk route) to Poland (area 492 km²),
the northern part of East Prussia as Memelland under control of France, later transferred to Lithuania without plebiscite.
* from the eastern part of West Prussia and the southern part of East Prussia Warmia and Masuria, a small area to Poland,
* the city of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) with the delta of Vistula river at the Baltic Sea was made the Freie Stadt Danzig (Free City of Danzig) under the League of Nations. (area 1 893 km², 408,000 inhabitants (1929)).
PS: Depois "admiram-se" que a WWII tenha começado com uma invasão da Polónia (esta recusou qualquer negociação com os alemães). E foi o motivo primeiro para a Inglaterra e França, não atacadas, declararem guerra à Alemanha. E não o contrário. Aliás, como em ambas as guerras. Curioso, não? Se a Polónia era um problema territorial, já o comunismo e Estaline era o inimigo declarado.
Foi pena não terem podido combater um com outro, com o resto do mundo a assistir à sua destruição mútua. Mas isso tirava toda a glória ao estatismo "Aliado", não é?
PS2: Quem é que depois "ficou" com a Polónia? O "Uncle Joe", para os amigos.
PS3: "...the east part of Upper Silesia, to Poland (area 3 214 km², 965,000 inhabitants), although after plebiscite 60 % voted for Germany".
The Big Lie About 'Islamic Fascism'
E é fácil de notar a ironia da observação objectiva de que as tendências fascistas (ainda que inconscientes e sem intenção) residem no anti-"islamo-fascismo".
"The best modern definition I’ve read of fascism comes in former Colombia University Professor Robert Paxton’s superb 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism.
Paxton defines fascism’s essence, which he aptly terms its "emotional lava" as:
1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions;
2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits;
3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts;
4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint;
5. f ear of foreign "contamination."
Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors. All successful fascists regimes, Paxton points out, allied themselves to traditional conservative parties, and to the military-industrial complex.
Highly conservative and militaristic regimes are not necessarily fascist, says Paxton. True fascism requires relentless aggression abroad and a semi-religious adoration of the regime at home.
None of the many Muslim groups opposing US-British control of the Mideast fit Paxton’s definitive analysis. The only truly fascist group ever to emerge in the Mideast was Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Phalange Party in the 1930’s which, ironically, became an ally of Israel’s rightwing in the 1980’s.
There is nothing in any part of the Muslim World that resembles the corporate fascist states of western history. In fact, clan and tribal-based traditional Islamic society, with its fragmented power structures, local loyalties, and consensus decision-making, is about as far as possible from western industrial state fascism. (...)
As Prof. Andrew Bosworth notes in an incisive essay on so-called Islamic fascism, "Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism."
However, there are plenty of modern fascists. But to find them, you have to go to North America and Europe. These neo-fascists advocate "preemptive attacks against all potential enemies," grabbing other nation’s resources, overthrowing uncooperative governments, military dominance of the world, hatred of Semites (Muslims in this case), adherence to biblical prophecies, hatred of all who fail to agree, intensified police controls, and curtailment of "liberal" political rights.(...)"
Freedom Fighters?
Eight British people remained injured in hospital in the Turkish holiday resort of Marmaris last night, following a wave of bomb attacks on the country's Mediterranean coastline and in Istanbul, which left at least three dead.
The attacks, claimed by a Kurdish separatist group, were aimed at damaging the area's tourist industry"
PS: Qual será o remédio dos anti-pacifistas quanto a pretensões de grupos separatistas (assim do tipo dos revolucionários americanos como George Wasghinton, ou assim do tipo da Irlanda, ou quem sabe no Kosovo, ou ainda no "Taiwain"...ou até do separatismo étnico fundacional israelita)?
Devem adoptar o seu anti-pacifismo ou adoptar a "doença" do pacifismo? Devem adoptar a sua atitude "corajosa" e "não-cobarde" "pro-war" ou devem rejeitar a violência? Já sei, só podem usar a violência se se constituirem como exército formal, colocarem-se numa planicie e combaterem com espingardas e fardados, os misseis que chegarem, porque aí, sim, seria um combate legítimo e não escondido entre civis (não que os civis mortos por um exército "formal" os incomodem, porque esses, não são "legítimos"? principalmente se perpretados por uma "democracia"?).
Time bomb
Quando daqui a uns anos se chevar talvez à conclusão que a criação de um novo exército iraquiano significou sim o armamento e treinamento de uma ou mais qualquer tendência/movimento"who knows"? (ou separatista ou que ganha o acesso ao regime, etc), vamos outra vez ouvir o comentário lacónico "Lá estão a atirar as culpas aos americanos", depois vão comentar que a culpa" foi mesmo de quem pediu a retirada das tropas americanas" e dos "iranianos" (a quem foi oferecida o desaparecimento da influência Sunita tal como a "Vitória Total" sobre e Japão e a Alemanha ofereceu o globo ao comunismo).
Never learning.
Os "Idiotas úteis" de Lenine
Os "pro-war" gostam assim de evocar Lenine para descrebilizar os "anti-war".
Mas Lenine, em boa verdade, referia-se aos "Idiotas Úteis" para evocar quem não-intencionalmente contribuiu para as condições propícias a uma revolução comunista interna, não própriamente sobre quem procura a paz em conflitos extra-territoriais.
Um culpado, claro, foi o Presidente Americano (Democrata, progressista, anti-monárquico, pouco amigo do cristianismo ortodoxo e catolicismo) que impediu o Czar de chegar a acordo com o Kaiser (de que era primo, além de ser neto da Rainha Vitória) insistindo na continuação da guerra.
Isso esgotou o regime permitindo que uma monarquia com 5 milhões de soldados fieis ao Czar acabasse na mão de uma minoria comunista (com uma ideologia completamente estranha à tradição e costume duma cultura cristã ortodoxa), que levantava a bandeira da paz.
A historia está cheia de ironias.
A causa dos "idiotas úteis" de Lenine são os idiotas inúteis pela "permanent war for permanent peace". Foi a não obtenção da paz mais cedo (e em primeiro lugar o próprio início da guerra, defendendo um aliado da sua esfera de influência que estava implicado num atentado terrorista contra o herdeiro do Império-Austro-Húngaro) que concedeu a grande oportunidade a Lenine (foram os próprios alemães a colocar Lenine no comboio em direcção a Mosocovo como quem lança uma arma biológica de destruição maciça).
Assim, sempre que ouvirem alguém evocar os "idiotas úteis", sabemos que provávelmente estará a falar um "idiota inútil".
PS: a dislexia de termos, conceitos e interpretação histórica é uma constante no anti-"islamo-fasicsmo".
Bigotry and Ignorance of Islam
"President George Bush's ignorance of the Middle East and its people is well-known. So also is his habit of parroting words and sentences given to him by other people.
He hit a new low when he referred to "Islamic fascists."
No two more opposite concepts are to be found. Fascism glorifies the nation-state; Islam is transnational. Fascism demands slavish devotion to a national leader; Muslims are far too independent-minded to be slavish followers of anybody. Virtually all the people Saddam Hussein murdered were people trying to overthrow him. Fascism is militaristic. Islam is not.(...)
The West faces no threat from Islam. Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the world, but it really is a religion of peace. More importantly, it is a religion that concentrates on individual salvation. There is no Muslim pope, no College of Cardinals, no bishops, no priesthood. Any five Muslims anywhere in the world can start their own mosque. Imams are teachers and, like Protestant preachers or Jewish rabbis, can be fired by their congregation. The Shi'ite version is slightly more organized.
A fatwa is a statement issued by an imam, usually explanatory. It is similar to statements issued by the pope, with this important difference: No Muslim is bound by any fatwa. Muslims are free to pay attention to it or to ignore it.
Islam, like Christianity, is a universal religion that ignores nationality, race or color. To become a Muslim, one must profess belief in one God, acknowledge Muhammad as his prophet, recognize the Quran as the word of God, pray five times a day, provide for the poor and, if possible, make a trip to Mecca once in your lifetime. The God Muslims worship is the same God Christians and Jews worship.
To dispose of some of the slanderous misstatements being floated about, Islam forbids forced conversions. People would do well to read some history rather than rely on ignorant and malicious radio and TV talk-show hosts. The oldest Christian communities in the world are all in Muslim countries. There have always been Christian and Jewish communities in the Muslim world. Muslims are commanded to treat Christians and Jews as they would treat themselves. They revere Jesus as a prophet and highly respect the Virgin Mary. The disputes you see in the modern Middle East are not religious; they are all about secular matters, principally Israeli occupation of Arab lands.The Arabs see Israel as the last European colonialist state imposed on them by the European powers. That's true, in fact.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are concerned only with ending Israeli occupation of Palestine. Hezbollah is concerned with ending Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Al-Qaeda wants to overthrow the Persian Gulf governments and is at war with us because we are the principal backers and supporters of those governments. Al-Qaeda alone is most un-Islamic and has been so labeled by a majority of Muslims. It is a small group. (...)"
"Islamo-fascismo"e Unintended Consequences da Guerra Fria
Today's 'Islamic Fascists' Were Yesterday's Friends by Brendan O'Neill
"In a nutshell, the wars over state, territory, and politics that defined the Cold War era have given way to cosmic battles between "good" and "evil" – between a West apparently keen to defend secular, democratic values and its twisted opponents who prefer the idea of autocratic Islam.
This simplistic view of the new geopolitical landscape is deeply problematic. It overlooks the key role that the West played in nurturing radical Islamist groups, precisely as a means of isolating and undermining secular movements that were judged by Western governments to be too uppity or dangerous. Over the past 80 years and more – from Egypt to Afghanistan to Palestine – powerful governments in the West and their allies in the Middle East helped to create radical Islamic sects as a bulwark against secular nationalist parties or pan-Arabism. They gave the nod to, and in some instances funded and armed, Islamist movements that might challenge the claims of local anti-colonial, liberationist, or communistic outfits.
In other words, there is a deep and bitter irony in the West's current claims to be standing up to evil religious sects in the name of universal values. It was precisely the West's earlier disregard for secularism and democracy in the Middle East, its elevation of its own powerful interests over the needs and desires of local populations, which helped to give rise to a layer of apparently "evil" radical Islamism. What we have today is not a World War between a principled West and psychotic groups from "over there," but rather the messy residue of decades of Western meddling in the Middle East.
Duplicitous Western support for Islamist movements has a long and dishonorable history. In the early and middle 20th century, both British and U.S. intelligence supported the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which so many of today's radical Islamic sects – including Hamas and even al-Qaeda – have sprung. Indeed, in the 1920s, the British, then the colonial rulers of Egypt, helped to set up the Muslim Brotherhood as a means of keeping Egyptian nationalism and anti-colonialism in check. (...)"
Ler o resto.
2006/08/28
A Palestina: um problema teológico?
"Em 1977, em Jerusalém, tendo-lhe observado que mais cedo ou mais tarde os judeus teriam de partilhar Jerusalém com os palestinianos, um funcionário do Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros israelita atirou-me: "Nunca! Não esqueça que esta terra nos foi dada por Deus há três mil anos!" Já antes me tinha confessado que era ateu, mas formara os filhos no conhecimento da Bíblia e celebrava a Páscoa como está determinado. E eu percebi melhor como tantas vezes a religião não passa de cimento ideológico político. De facto, sobretudo desde a fundação do Estado judaico, há dois povos com a consciência de que a Palestina lhes pertence, respectivamente, há três mil e quase 1400 anos: os judeus reportam-se ao reino de David e Salomão - ano 1000 a. C. - e os palestinianos à conquista pelos árabes em 636 d. C. Desde o século XIX, o movimento político sionista lutou por um Estado para o povo judeu - pensou-se na Palestina e também noutras regiões. Assim, embora a tenha apressado, o Holocausto não foi a causa da criação do Estado judaico. Em 29 de Novembro de 1947, por maioria sólida e com o beneplácito dos Estados Unidos e da antiga União Soviética, as Nações Unidas aprovaram a divisão da Palestina em dois Estados: um Estado árabe e um Estado judaico, com fronteiras claras, a união económica entre os dois e a internacionalização de Jerusalém sob a administração das Nações Unidas. Note-se que, apesar de a população árabe ser quase o dobro e os judeus estarem então na posse de 10% do território, ficariam com 55% da Palestina.O mundo árabe rejeitou a divisão. Mas, à distância, mesmo admitindo a injustiça da partilha e suas consequências - é preciso pensar na fuga e expulsão dos palestinianos -, considera-se que a recusa árabe foi "um erro fatal" (Hans Küng). Isso é reconhecido hoje também pelos palestinianos, pois acabaram por perder a criação de um Estado próprio soberano pelo qual lutam. Em 15 de Maio de 1948, terminava o mandato britânico sobre a Palestina e Ben Gurion proclamou o Estado de Israel. A resposta árabe (palestinianos e Estados árabes vizinhos) não se fez esperar, e deflagrou a primeira de seis guerras. Entretanto, o Estado de Israel continua a não ser aceite por muitos árabes e há judeus que acalentam a tentação do sonho de um Estado que abrangesse toda a Palestina. E aí está um dos focos principais de instabilidade mundial.Como já deveria ter-se tornado claro, a guerra não gera a paz, que só pode chegar mediante o diálogo, a diplomacia, cedências mútuas, com dois pressupostos fundamentais: o reconhecimento pelos Estados árabes e pelos palestinianos do Estado de Israel e o reconhecimento por Israel de um Estado palestiniano soberano viável (é pura utopia irracional pensar em Jerusalém como capital dos dois Estados ou na sua internacionalização?).No conflito do Médio Oriente, estão envolvidos homens e mulheres que de um modo ou outro estão vinculados às três religiões monoteístas. A mensagem dessas religiões, apesar de todas as tragédias históricas, é de paz. Lê- -se em Isaías: "Transformarão as suas espadas em relhas de arados, e as suas lanças, em foices. Uma nação não levantará a sua espada contra outra e não se adestrarão mais para a guerra." No Sermão da Montanha, Jesus declarou "bem-aventurados os construtores da paz, porque serão chamados filhos de Deus". No Alcorão, apesar da exortação à "preparação de toda a força" contra os infiéis, ordena-se: "Mas se eles se inclinarem para a paz, inclina-te tu também para ela. E confia em Deus!"O conflito do Médio Oriente é sobretudo político. Mas, como escreveu o teólogo Hans Küng, em duas volumosas obras fundamentais - O Judaísmo e O Islão -, não haverá paz nem no Próximo nem no Médio Oriente enquanto os membros das três religiões monoteístas, que se reclamam de Abraão, se não tornarem activos politicamente, impedindo o fanatismo religioso.Assim, com base na Bíblia hebraica e no Novo Testamento, judeus e cristãos devem empenhar-se no reconhecimento da dignidade dos povos árabes e islâmicos, que "não querem ser as últimas colónias" sobre a Terra. Com base no Alcorão e no Novo Testamento, muçulmanos e cristãos devem comprometer-se com a exigência do reconhecimento do direito à vida do povo judaico, que "sofreu mais do que todos os outros ao longo dos últimos dois mil anos".Com base na Bíblia hebraica e no Alcorão, judeus e muçulmanos devem empenhar-se a favor da "liberdade ameaçada das comunidades cristãs" em muitos países do Próximo e do Médio Oriente.
Recusar
Mas aterrorizados é o que se vislumbra no campo, digamos, "pro-war", que para cúmulo do seu indisfarçável medo perante perigos inexistentes explorados por um certo histerismo muito feminino (ok, de algumas delas) conjugado com aquilo que chamo o Complexo de Churchill , ainda gostam de lançar a sombra de "cobardia" a quem tenta preservar algum bom senso, realismo, algum humanismo, e o sentido supostamente muito liberal das "unintended consequences" do intervencionismo, bem intencionado ou não.
PS: Complexo de Churchill - o militarismo conflituoso pró-bom-império que reclama dos mais altos valores da civilização para tomar decisões que destruiram: a civilização (WWI) e o império (WWII).
2006/08/18
Férias...
Robert Nisbet: "The Quest for Community - A Study in the Ethics of Order & Freedom"
Fascismo
"We will not recognize [American totalitarianism] as it rises. It will wear no black shirts here. It will probably have no marching songs. It will rise out of a congealing of a group of elements that exist here and that are the essential components of Fascism...It will be at first decorous, humane, glowing with homely American sentiment."
Cair na Real 3
Half a century later, Ariel Sharon said, "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion … that there can be no Zionism, colonization, or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
The current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told the U.S. Congress: "I believe in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land" (his emphasis)."
(...)
Blair has backed this barbarism enthusiastically. In 2001, the Israeli press disclosed that he had secretly given the "green light" to Sharon's bloody invasion of the West Bank, whose advance plans he was shown. Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon – is it any wonder the attacks of July 7 and this month's Heathrow scare happened? The CIA calls this "blowback." On Aug. 12, the Guardian published an editorial ("The challenge for us all"), which waffled about how "a significant number of young people have been alienated from the [Muslim] culture," but spent not a word on how Blair's Middle East disaster was the source of their alienation. A polite pretense is always preferred in describing British policy, elevating "misguided" and "inappropriate" and suppressing criminal behavior.
Go into Muslim areas and you will be struck by a fear reminiscent of the anti-Semitic nightmare of the Jews in the 1930s, and by an anger generated almost entirely by "a perceived double standard in the foreign policy of Western governments," as the Home Office admits. This is felt deeply by many young Asians who, far from being "alienated from their culture," believe they are defending it. How much longer are we all prepared to put up with the threat to our security coming from Downing Street? Or do we wait for the "unimaginable"? The Real Threat We Face in Britain Is Blair by John Pilger
Como se defende uma sociedade aberta?
Sejam quais forem a natureza dos ataques, estes nunca terão a capacidade de colocar em causa o equilibrío e estabilidade fornecido pela flexbilidade e capacidade de adaptação do Capitalismo (não falo dos Estados, mas sim da realidade civil).
Cair na real (2)
Speaking at the State Department on Monday, President George W. Bush praised the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 on Lebanon as “an important step forward that will help bring an end to the violence.” In an optimistically intoned address he claimed that Hizbollah was defeated because a “robust international force” and the Lebanese Army will “restore the sovereignty of its democratic government all Lebanese territory” and stop Hezbollah from acting as a state within the state.
Mr. Bush is wrong on all counts.
PS: Falar de desarmamento, ou da possibilidade da ONU o fazer (nem a NATO o fez no Kosovo...) é wishfull thinking. Nada de isso se passará, pelo menos sem a vontade da Síria e Irão. Se não fizerem parte da solução vão sempre fazer parte do problema.
Cair na real
"But the Islamic revolution in Iran was like European fascism in its totalitarian domestic ambition and its violently aggressive foreign policy"
Diz o texto anti-islâmico-fascista. O que distingue toda esta linguagem e raciocíonio proto-neo-con é a sua incapacidade analítica toldada pela sua ideologia turculenta.
A revolução islâmica teve lugar porque:
* o Irão tinha um regime totalitário de Pahlevi (usando os chavões dos próprios) colocado no poder por um Golpe de Estado operado pela CIA e Britânicos contra um Presidente IRaniano eleito democráticamente nos anos 50.
What about that?
* o Irão teve de se defender contra um SADDAM ("expansionista" - "violently aggressive foreign policy"?) armado e ajudado operacionalmente pelos EUA e Britânicos.
What about that?
* O Irão adoptou um regime demo-teocrático. O último presidente eleito constituiu um supresa para todos os analistas incluindo aqueles que classificam o regime simplisticamente (como tudo o que pretendem classificar) como "totalitário" (e o grande totalitário do séc.20 Estaline foi "nosso" aliado ja´depois de conhecidas as suas atrocidades) que atribuiam a vitória nas eleições "óbviamente" fantoches a outro candidato.
What about that?
PS: É dificil perceber os créditos que ainda restem a este tipo de "analistas"? Principalmente para "classificar". Como o fizeram ao chamar "rato cobarde a Saddam". Saddam pode ser um tirano, mas cobarde e sem dignidade de "Estado" é que não é. Provávelmente seria o úinico a conseguir um reequilibrio Sunita e pôr termo a uma guerra civil. Mas o idealistas querem uma democracia-federal-Suiça.(palavras autênticas da National Review).
Derrotas
A derrota de Israel , Vasco Pulido Valente
"A "barbaridade" de Israel pareceu incontroversa e os "peritos" resolveram invocar o aberrante argumento da "resposta desproporcionada". "Desproporcionada" a quê? À instalação na fronteira de meios suficientes para paralisar e destruir uma boa parte de Israel? À própria sobrevivência de Israel? Nunca houve resposta. O espectáculo do sofrimento chegava para convencer a boa alma do Ocidente.Bush e Blair, sem apoio doméstico e em plena derrota no Afeganistão e no Iraque, recuaram; e da sombra saiu o sinistro Chirac. A Europa e a América decidiram de repente que a pequena querela entre Israel e o Hezbollah (um assunto local) não interessava particularmente ao futuro do mundo. Apesar do 11 de Setembro e de tudo o que a seguir aconteceu, o Ocidente não consegue levar a sério a ameaça do islamismo, como levou a sério a do comunismo. No fundo, o homem comum não acredita que uma civilização fracassada, miserável e medieval possa prevalecer contra a majestade da Europa e da América. Talvez sim. Mas pode, entretanto, empurrar a Europa e a América para um desastre difícil de imaginar e de reparar. Com a derrota de Israel, esse desastre ficou mais próximo"
PS: VPV é realista quanto aos resultados mas...
1. A "derrota" de Israel resulta de querer acreditar que a lei dos "20 olhos por cada olho" pode continuar a ser aplicada como o foi necessário para a sua fundação.
2. O conflito mostrou que o hezbollah não tem capacidade ofensiva contra Israel. Mas o que mostrou também que são possíveis novos patamares de desordem, resultados das acções estratégicamente mal concebidas anteriores (o nascimento do hezbollah como força relevante na anteior invasão do Líbano que inicialmente tinha o objectivo de combater a OLP).
3. VPV fala também na derrota do Iraque e Afeganistão. Essa derrotas foram criadas pelos proponentes. E são esses proponentes e defensores que são incansáveis em faze o contexto piorar a cada ano que passa. São os self-fullfilling profets.
4. À medida que erros são cometido e que o islamismo ganha adeptos democráticamente até ao ponto dos regimes árabes (os fascistas, as monarquias absolutas) poderem vir a ser postos em causa, esse é o cenário incentivado pelos próprios proclamados islamo-fascistas, que têm o complexo de Churchill, imaginam-se sempre com a sua inteligência astuta acima da média a vislumbrar todos perigos contra o Ocidente (se bem que antes era a glória do Império Britânico) e recomendar a solução : uma solução fina!
5. O perigo comunista: sim, real, não tanto pela perigo convencional de "invasões", mas pela luta ideológica interna a cada país. Mas um pouco de paciência e ... desabou.
Estado-Nação como garantia do estado de Anarquia Internacional
O patriotismo independentista é uma forma de proto-anarquismo: "queremos" auto-soberania de supra-ordens politicas.
O Estado-Nação é uma garantia do estado de anarquia internacional (ausência de monopólio de lei), o que não significa desordem. Foi na verdade o impulsionador do desenvolvimento do "Ocidente", múltiplas fontes de direito, político e religioso em concorrência aberta.
Hoje, o centralismo do Estado Moderno, em pouco ou nada (e enquanto não for posto em causa por uma provável tendência para as autonomias regionais) deixa espaço para essas múltiplas fontes internas (como na Idade Média).
Mas pelo menos (ainda) temos o Estado-Nação contra um novo patamar de integração política, que a história mostra não ser de todo necessária para a integração económica.
A desordem internacional só aparece precisamente quando (com tem vindo a acontecer) a violação da soberania e influências dos outros (intervencionismos vários) começa a ser uma prática corrente. Aí entramos na anomia (sem lei) porque os conflitos passam a não ter regras de restrição e tendem também a ser globais e destrutivos.
Abetting Catastrophe in Lebanon
"Certainly, there is outrage among non-Shia politicians and people who blame Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into a futile war. But so devastating has been Israel's campaign that Hezbollah's provocation is fading into distant memory."
Thus, popular opinion shifted toward Hezbollah. One poll in early August found that 71 percent of Lebanese supported Hezbollah's initial capture of the Israeli soldiers and 87 percent backed its retaliation after Israel's attack.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora formally thanked Hezbollah's leader "for his efforts" and "all those who sacrificed their lives for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon." By August, even Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, long a Hezbollah critic, declared that he had to support the group in response to "brutal Israeli aggression."
He added, "All American policy in the Middle East is at stake because their failure in Palestine, then failure in Iraq, and now this failure in Lebanon will lead to a new Arab world where the so-called radical Arabs will profit." It doesn't take a genius to imagine that many of those with families shattered, homes destroyed, and lives uprooted will eventually vent their fury on Israel, and perhaps America."
Doug Bandow is a Washington-based political writer and policy analyst and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.
2006/08/17
Got to love it (II)
Taki Theodoracopulos (Um aristocrata de origem grega - cujo pai lutou na resistência grega ao nazismo, escreve na The Spectator, acusado de unpatriotic conservative pelo neocon David Frum pela oposição ao "Iraque").
"In June 1967, I was married to my first wife and living in Paris, playing tennis and polo. When the Six-Day War began, Israel asked for volunteers of any nationality and religion. It took me about one minute to decide. I presented myself to the Israeli consulate and was sent by bus to a gathering place near Clichy, where I spent an extremely uncomfortable night among young French Jews who occasionally would scream out “Israel Vivra!” Needless to say, we were all sent home the next day, Israel’s blitz attack having destroyed the Egyptian air force on day one, the Syrian army and the Arab Legion on days two and three. Then came the Egyptian army’s turn. After one week it was all over.
The reason I volunteered was that like many of my friends, I was pro-Israel. Two things made me change my mind: Yehudi Menuhin and the sinking of the USS Liberty and its immediate cover-up by the LBJ administration.
In London, Menuhin, a Jew, declared that he would go to Palestine and give a concert in aid of the displaced Palestinians. When I met him at a friend’s house, he told me things that were hard to believe: about the terror tactics of the Stern Gang and of Irgun, both initially formed to force the British out but who had turned to killing innocent Arabs in order to gain territory. Coming from a devout Jew and the greatest violinist of his time, the point sank in. I eventually made my way down to Palestine and saw the squalid camps the refugees were living in and heard about Deir Yassin, a village that lived in peace with its Jewish neighbors until the massacre by Irgun. As a result, 600,000 Arabs fled the Palestinian territories the UN had set aside for a Jewish state, ensuring a Jewish majority in the new state.
So someone who was ready to fight for Israel’s survival eventually turned pro-Palestinian, while terrorists like Menachem Begin, a future prime minister, were turned into heroes by the propagandists in Israel and in America.
Labels simply don’t work. The old cliché of today’s terrorist becoming tomorrow’s freedom fighter, however, does.
The same applies to world politics.
(...) All governments are monopolies of organized force, inherently unjustifiable. And once accepted, they are bound to get out of control sooner or later.
No, there is no longer a Right or a Left.
Bush’s mammoth expansion of government power and spending makes LBJ look like Robert Taft, the last true conservative—and peace lover, I might add.
Labels are for fools"
Got to love it
Patrick J. Buchanan
".Home from the beach Saturday last, I picked up The Weekly Standard. Within the magazine some still regard as the parish bulletin of the Beltway Right was an essay by one Noemie Emery furiously contesting Peter Beinart’s claim to Harry Truman.
Harry belongs to us, insisted Ms. Emery. He was “heir to a great wartime president,” she wrote. Would that be the same FDR who “lied us into war,” whose regime was honeycombed with treason, who at Tehran and Yalta betrayed Poland and all of Eastern Europe to the barbarous tyrant he called “Uncle Joe”?
Freedom was “expanded by Roosevelt and Truman, who extended the welfare state,” Ms. Emery continued. Good to know.
As for Ronald Reagan, he was “an original Truman Democrat and New Dealer [who] ... brought the Truman DNA into the Republican Party with a cadre of Scoop Jackson Democrats …” To Emery, Reagan will go down in history as the Moses who led the neocons out of Egypt to the Promised Land: power. Reagan himself used to tell us Barry Goldwater was the John the Baptist of our movement.
And why is Emery “wild about Harry?” Operation Keelhaul? The defense of Alger Hiss? The loss of China to Maoism? The firing of General MacArthur? The offer to send the battleship Missouri to Russia to pick up Stalin and bring him over to respond to Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech? The “no-win war” in Korea?
No. Ms. Emery reveres FDR and Harry because they “planned, executed, and blessed a campaign so completely hair-raising that the horror remains to this day.” FDR and Truman, you see, had the true grit to do Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. And so a “conservative” magazine claims Harry for our side.
What Ms. Emery’s piece reveals is that conservatism today is as shot through with corruption as the Church of Pope Alexander VI, two of whose brood of bastards were Lucretia and Cesare Borgia.
We are in need of a Council of Trent to redefine who we are.(...)"
"The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to 'loving and faithfully serving his country,' at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting."
Carl Schurz, April 1898
Opium hits record in Afghanistan
"Officials: Cultivation hits new levels despite antinarcotics money"
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels -- up by more than 40 percent from 2005 -- despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money, Western officials told The Associated Press.
2006/08/16
"Líbano: 42 corpos resgatos dos escombros no sul do país"
"Pelo menos 42 cadáveres foram encontrados nas localidades libanesas onde os serviços de socorro conseguiram entrar, a sul do rio Litani. As operações de busca ainda não começaram nas localidades fronteiriças, que foram alvo de intensos bombardeamentos nos últimos dias."
"Israel planeou guerra no Líbano antes do rapto dos seus soldados "
Preparar a defesa contra um ataque em larga escala em território Libanês (depois do Sul do Líbano ter sido ocupado tantos anos e a aviação isrelita com frequência violar o espaço aéreo do Líbano)?
Era tão, tão claro, que o rapto de 2 soldados (que já tinham acontecido, mas resolvidos por negociação, etc) foi o motivo para o lançamento de uma operação de larga escala estudada ao pormenor antecipadamente...
Porquê cometer estes erros numa linha de defesa? Existem pontos válidos que podem ser feitos, é escusado entrar na linha QI abaixo de 50 de muitos crazy-neo-cons.
Cairam numa ratoreira talvez. Este tipo de derrota estratégica evitável por parte de Israel só vai trazer maiores problemas a Israel cuja saída é pelo contrário ganhar posição moral ao responder o mínimo possivel fora do seu territorio (mas cuidando da sua defesa territorial e fronteiriça).
Quando Israel nao respodeu aos mísseis de Saddam (de resto, totalmente ineficazes, nao me lembro sequer de vítimas mortais) essa posição e reconhecimento moral cresceu imediatamente. A Síria, lembremos, fez parte da "coligaçao de vontades" contra Saddam.
Sobre o Islamo-fascismo
O "idiota útil" George Wasghinton
"...the duty and interest of the United States require, that they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent Powers.... "
* Washington’s Farewell Address:
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? "
*...the first president argued, should set an example for the rest of the world by pursuing peace, commerce, paying its debts, and resisting the frequent pressures to go to war. He knew that this would be a difficult standard to abide by, but he urged his countrymen to try:
"The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices? "
* Washington counseled flexibility. He criticized “permanent, inveterate antipathies” as well as “passionate attachments” for other nations.
"The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. "
* Habitual hatred, he cautioned, would mean the United States would need little excuse for going to war.
"Antipathy in one nation against another, disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate envenomed, and bloody contests.... "
* Washington would have probably understood the dynamics of the many lobbyist groups that, over the last generations, have successfully pushed for the United States to enter wars such as the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the two Gulf wars. He warned that Americans must be “constantly awake” to the pressures that could lead to war.
"As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils? "
Via The American Heritage of “Isolationism” by Gregory Bresiger
2006/08/15
Olmert's War, and the Next One
When Israel answered the Hezbollah raid that captured two soldiers with air strikes on Lebanon's airport, runways, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, buses, apartment houses, and power plants, we who questioned the wisdom and morality of what Israel was doing were denounced as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.
Turns out we were right. In private, even Israeli army generals were raging that Israel was fighting a stupid, losing war.
Ehud Olmert, who gave Chief of Staff Dan Halutz the green light to launch the shock-and-awe air campaign, cannot survive the moral, political, and strategic disaster his country has suffered.
While the Israeli air force was hammering Lebanon, Hezbollah rained down 3,000 rockets on Israel and fought off pinprick raids. When the Israeli army, after a month, moved in force against the real enemy, Hezbollah, Israel had already suffered irreparable damage to its reputation as a fighting nation and a moral country.
As the war began, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain all condemned Hezbollah, as did the Beirut government, for inciting the war. But with Hezbollah's defiant resistance, as Israel smashed up Lebanon, the Arab street rallied to Nasrallah. Arab regimes followed. The losers?
Lebanon, which suffered 800 dead, thousands injured, and 1 million made refugees, saw its infrastructure destroyed and nation set back 20 years. If the government falls or Lebanon becomes a failed state, it will be an even greater calamity for the Lebanese, and for Israel and the Middle East. For the mightiest political and military force in Lebanon, and likely heir apparent to power slipping away from Prime Minister Siniora, is now Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah.
Says Walid Jumblatt, savage critic of Hezbollah and its Syrian alliance, "Hassan Nasrallah has won militarily and politically, and has become a new leader like Nasser."
Another loser is Israel, and Olmert, who seized on the border skirmish to launch his Lebanon war. Writes Ari Shavit of Ha'aretz:
"Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeats, and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say, oops, I made a mistake."
Olmert and Halutz are history. The Kadima Party regime will fall. Left and Right are already tearing at its flanks.
What does this mean? The Sharon-Olmert policy of unilateral withdrawal from the territories is dead. The Hamas-led Palestinian authority, the creation of the freest and fairest elections ever held in Palestine, is on a death watch, after Israel's starvation blockade and ravaging of the Gaza Strip, which has left 150 Palestinians dead.
A new Israeli regime will not withdraw from any more land, nor shut down any more settlements, nor vacate any part of Jerusalem, nor negotiate with a Palestinian Authority led by Hamas, or by a PLO that is unable to disarm Hamas. We are at a dead end, as George W. Bush will not push the Israelis to do anything, nor will Congress.
America is another loser.
The United States knew in advance Israel planned to attack and, if possible, destroy Hezbollah. And America approved.
But when Olmert launched an air war on Lebanon, instead, Bush cheered him on, refused to rein in attacks on civilian targets, sent smart bombs and used U.S. influence at the United Nations to block an early cease-fire. Bush-Cheney are thus morally and politically culpable for what was done to Lebanon and the democratic government there that was born of a "Cedar Revolution" George Bush himself had championed.
Congress poodled along with Bush, so Bush will not be called to account, as he would be were any other nation but Israel involved. From Morocco to the Gulf, there is probably not a country today that would welcome Bush, or where he would be safe on a state visit.
Where does this leave us? With Israel's failure to achieve its strategic objectives in Lebanon and America having failed to attain its strategic objectives in Iraq, Nasrallah emerges triumphant, and Syria and Iran emerge unscathed and gloating.
What comes next? That is obvious.
With our War Party discredited by the failed policies it cheered on in Lebanon and Iraq, there will come a clamor that Bush must "go to the source" of all our difficulty – Iran. Only thus can the War Party redeem itself for having pushed us and Israel into two unnecessary and ruinous wars. And the drumbeat for war on Iran has already begun.
"[T]he dangers continue to mount abroad," wails The Weekly Standard in its lead editorial. "How Bush deals with Ahmadinejad's terror-supporting and nuclear-weapons pursuing Iran will be the test" of his administration. Yes, the supreme test.
Bush is on notice from the neocons and War Party that have all but destroyed his presidency: Either you take down Iran, Mr. Bush, or you are a failed president.
If the president is still listening to these people, Lord help the Republic.
WAR GUILT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Introdução: Um texto de 1967, na publicação que por excelência deu (ou marca a) origem do movimento libertarian. Rothbard, começou a sua senda politica nos Young Republicans e no conservadorismo tradicional americano para passar a um dos responsáveis principais por um novo movimento ideológico, juntando o que tinha sido o isolacionismo conservador tradicional americano, que se opôs à WWI, ao New Deal e o envolvimento dos EUA na Europa da WWII (Roosevelt prometeu sob a biblia, no seu famoso terceiro mandato - será que Putin vai ser crucificado se fizer o mesmo que Roosevelt fêz ? - não envolver os EUA noutra "guerra dos europeus"), com as raizes neutrais dos founding fathers, e ainda as suas próprias contribuições anti-state e com o tempo, novas incursôes nas teorias do anarco-capitalismo. Rothbard, filho de imigrantes Judeus Polacos.
O texto é de Outono de 1967, na altura, a critica não-á-esquerda do intervencionismo no Vietname (desde as suas origens, não a meio) fazia dele uma voz isolada e por isso mesmo com tentativas de alianças estratégicas com quem, sobre um determinado assunto, na altura o intervencionismo da guerra fria, obtivesse algum contacto (de resto, mais tarde acabada por causa dos problemas crónicos de consistência e honestidade à esquerda). Sobre o Médio Oriente também. O que ele repetia muitas vezes era (citando o filme que admirava - O Padrinho) , "Esta foi a vida que escolhemos". (Mas sempre acompanhado pela sua discreta mulher). Não foi uma vida fácil, para quem, em todos os assuntos (quer os da pura discussão na ciência económica - acolhendo/adoptando/desenvolvendo a Escola Austriaca e o Miseseanismo, quer os da ardilosa discussão da actualidade política, a do revisionismo anti-intervencionismo da história das guerras, etc) tinha um especial jeito para escolher os motivos mais fáceis para se colocar fora do maistream que por um motivo ou outro acaba sempre por fazer a corte à corte estatista. Daí a alcunha de Rothbard, the Anti-Sate.
Murray N. Rothbard "Editorial: War Guilt in the Middle East (505KB), LEFT AND RIGHT: A Journal of Libertarian Thought. Volume 3, Number 3; Spring-Autumn 1967
"(...) let us examine the root historical causes of the chronic as wellas the current acute crisis in the Middle East; and let us dochis with a view to discovering and assessing the Guilty.
The chronic Middle East crisis goes hack--as do many crises--to World War I.
The Brittsh, in return for mobilizing the Arab peoples against their oppressors of imperialTurkey, promised the Arabs their independence when the war was over. But, at the same time, the British government,with characteristic double-dealing, was promising Arab Palestine as a "National Home" for organized Zionism.
(...) We must, then, go back still further in history: forwhat was world Zionism.
Before the French Revolution,the Jews of Europe had been largely encased in ghettoes.and there emerged from ghetto life a distinct Jewish cultural and ethnic (as well as religious) identity, withYiddish as the common language (Hebrew being only theancient language of religious ritual.)
After the French Revolution, the Jews of Western Europe were emancipated from ghetto life, and they then faced a choice ofwhere to go from there. One group, the heirs of the Enlightenment, chose and advocated the choice of casting off narrow, parochial ghetto culture on behalf of assimi-lation into the culture and the environment of the Western world.
While assimilationism was clearly the rational course in America and Western Europe, this route couldnot easily be followed in Eastern Europe, where theghetto walls still held. In Eastern Europe, therefore, the Jews turned toward various movements for preservationof the Jewish ethnic and cultural identity. Most prevalentwas Bundism, the view point of the Jewish Bund, which advocated Jewish national self-determination, up to andi ncluding a Jewish State & the predominantly Jewish areas of Eastern Europe. (Thus, according to Bundism, the city of Vilna, in Eastern Europe, with a majority population of Jews, would be part of a newly-formed Jewish State.)
Another, less powerful, group of Jews,the Territorialist Movement, despairing of the future of Jews in Eastern Europe, advocated preserving the Yid-dishist Jewish identity by forming Jewish colonies and communities (States) in various unpopulated, virginareas of the world.
Given the conditions of European Jewry in the late 19 than turn of the 20th centuries, all of these movements had a rational groundwork .
The one Jewish movementthat made no sense was Zionism, a movement which began blended with Jewish Territorialism. But while the Territorialists simply wanted to preserve Jewish-Yid-dishist identity in a newly-developed land of their own Zionism began to insist on a Jewish land in Palestine alone.
The fact that Palestine was not a virgin land, butalready occupied by an Arab peasantry, meant nothing tothe ideologues of Zionism. Furthermore, the Zionists,far from hoping to preserve ghetto Yiddish culture, wishedto bury it and to substitute anewculture and a new languagebased on an artificial secular expansion of ancient reli-gious Hebrew.
In 1903, the British offered territory in Uganda forJewish colonization, and the rejection of this offer bythe Zionists polarized the Zionist and Territorialist move-ments which previously had been fused together. Fromthen on, the Zionists would be committed to the blood-and-soil mystique of Palestine, and Palestine alone, whilethe Territorialists would seek virgin land elsewhere inthe world.
Often old Turkish landtitles would be dredged up and purchased cheaply, thus expropriating the Arab peasantry on behalf of European Zionist immigration.
Into the heart of the peasant andnomadic Arab world of the Middle East there thus cameas colonists, and on the backs and on the bayonets of British imperialism, a largely European colonizing people.While Zionism was now committed to Palestine as a Jewish National Home, it was not yet committed to the aggrandizement of an independent Jewish State in Palestine.Indeed, only a minority of Zionists favored a Jewish State,and many of these had broken off from official Zionism,under the influence of Vladimir Jabotinsky, to form the Zionist-Revisionist movement to agitate for a Jewish Stateto rule historic ancient Palestine on both sides of theJordan River. It is not surprising that Jabotinsky expressedgreat admiration for the militarism and the social philosophy of Mussolini's fascism.
At the other wing of Zionism were the cultural Zionists, who opposed the idea of a political Jewish State. In particular,the (Unity) movement, centered around Martin Buberand a group of distinguished Jewish intellectuals from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, advocated, when theBritish should leave, a bi-national Jewish-Arab state inPalestine, with neither religious group to dominate theother, but both to work in peace and harmony to build theland of Palestine.
But the inner logic of Zionism was not to be brooked. In the tumultuous World Zionist convention at New York's Hotel Biltmore in 1942, Zionism, for the first time, adopted the goal of a Jewish State in Palestine, and nothing less.The extremists had won out. From then on, there was to bepermanent crisis in the Middle East.
Pressured from opposite sides by Zionists anxious for a Jewish state and by Arabs seeking an independent Palestine the British finally decided to pull out after World War II, and to turn the problem over to the United Nations.
As the drive for a Jewish State intensified, the revered Dr. Judah Magnes, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and head of the movement, bitterly denounced 'Zionist Totalitarianism", which, he charged, is 'trying to bring"the' entire Jewish people under its influence by force and violence. I have not yet seen the Zionist terrorists calledb y their rightful names: Killers--brutalized men andwomen . .. All Jews in America share in the guilt, eventhose not in accord with the activities of this new paganleadership, but who sit at ease with folded hands . . . "
Shortly afterward, Dr. Magnes felt it necessary to exile himself from Palestine and emigrate to the United States. Under unbelievably intense pressure from the United States,the UN--including an enthusiastic US and USSR--reluctantly approved a palestine partition plan in November 1947, aplan that formed the basis of the British pull-out and the Israel declaration of existence on May 15 of the followingyear.
The partition plan granted the Jews, who had a negligible fraction of Palestine land, almost half the land area of the country. Zionism had succeeded in carving out a European Jewish State, over Arab territory in the MiddleEast. But this is by no means all. The UN agreement had provided (a) that Jerusalem be internationalized under UN rule, and (b) that there be an economic union between the new Jewish and Arab Palestine states.
These were the basic conditions under which the UN approved partition.Both were promptly and brusquely disregarded by Israel--thus launching an escalating series of aggressions against the Arabs of the Middle East.
While the British were stillin Palestine, the Zionist para-military forces began to crush the Palestinian Arab armedforces in a series of civil war clashes. But, more fatefully,on April 9, 1948, the fanatical Zionist-Revisionist terrorists grouped in the organization Irgun Zvai Leumi massacred a hundred women and children in the Arab village of DeinYassin.
By the advent of Israel's independence on May 15 the Palestinian Arabs, demoralized, were fleeing in panic from their homes and from the threat of massacre.
The neighboring Arab states then sent in their troops. Historians are wont to describe the ensuing war as an invasion of Israel by the Arab states, heroically rebuffed by Israel, but since all of the fighting took place on Arab territory, this inter-pretation is clearly incorrect.
What happened, in fact, ist hat Israel managed to seize large chunks of territory assigned to the Palestinian Arabs by the partition agreement: including the Arab areas of Western Galilee. Arab west-central Palestine as "corridor" to Jerusalem, and the Arabcities of Jaffa and Beersheba. The bulk of Jerusalem--the New City--was also seized by Israel and the UN inter-nationalization plan discarded.
The Arab armies were hampered by their own inefficiency and disunity and by a series of UN-imposed truces broken only long enough forI srael to occupy more Arab territory.
By the time of the permanent armistice agreement of February 24, 1949. then, 600.000 Jews had created a State which had originally housed 850,000 Arabs (out of a totalPalestinian Arab population of 1.2 million).
Of these Arabs.three-quarters of a million had been driven out from their lands and homes, and the remaining remnant was subjectto a harsh military rule which, two decades later, is stillin force.
The homes, lands, and bank accounts of the fleeing Arab refugees were promptly confiscated by Israel and handed over to Jewish immigrants. Israel has long claimed that the three-quarters of a million Arabs were not driven out by force but rather by their own unjustified panic in-duced by Arab leaders--but the key point is that everyone recognizes Israel's adamant refusal to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them.
From that day to this, for two decades, these hapless Arab refugees, their ranks now swollen by natural increase to1.3 million, have continued to live in utter destitution in refugee camps around the Israeli borders, barely kept alive by meagre UN funds and CARE packages, living only for the day when they will return to their rightful homes.
In the areas of Palestine originally assigned to the Arabs, no Palestinian Arab government remained. The acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arabs, their Grand Mufti Haj Aminel-Husseini, was summarily deposed by the long-time British tool, King Abdullah of Trans-jordan, who simply confiscated the Arab regions of east-central Palestine, as well as the Old City of Jerusalem. (King Abdullah's Arab Legion had been built, armed, staffed, and even beaded by such coloni-alist British officers as Glubb Pasha.)
On the Arab refugees, Israel takes the attitude that the taxpayers of the world (i.e., largely the taxpayers of theUnited States) should kick in to finance a vast scheme tore-settle the Palestinian refugees somewhere in the MiddleEast--i.e., somewhere far from Israel.
The refugees, how-ever, understandahly have no interest in being re-settled;they want their own homes and properties back, period.
The armistice agreement of 1949 was supposed to be policedby a series of Mixed Armistice Commissions, composed of Israel and her Arab neighbors.
Very soon, however, Israeldissolved the Mixed Armistice Commissions and began toencroach upon more and more Arab territory. Thus, theofficially demilitarized zone of El Auja was summarilyseized by Israel.
Since the Middle East was still technically in a state of war(there was an armistice but no treaty of peace), Egypt, from 1949 on, continued to block the Strait of Tiran--the entranceto the Gulf of Aqaba--to all Israeli shipping and to all trade with Israel.
In view of the importance of the blocking of the Gulf of Aqaba in the 1967 war, it is important to remember that nobody griped at this Egyptian action: nobody said that Egypt was violating international law by closing this "peace-ful international waterway."
(Making any waterway open toall nations, according to international law, requires two con-ditions: (a) consent by the powers abutting on the water-way, and (b) no state of war existing between any powers onthe waterway. Neither of these conditions obtained for the Gulf of Aqaba: Egypt has never consented to such an agree-ment, and lsrael has been in a state of war with Egypt since 1949, so that Egypt blocked the Gulf to Israeli shipping un-challenged from 1949 on.)
Israel's history of continuing aggression had only begun.
Seven years later, in 1956, Israel, conjoined to British and French imperialist armies, jointly invaded Egypt.
And oh how proudly Israel consciously imitated Nazi blitzkriegand sneak-attack tactics. And oh how ironic that the very same American Establishment that had for years denounced Nazi blitzkriegs and sneak-attacks, was suddenly lost inadmiration for the very same tactics employed by Israell
But in this case, the United States, momentarily abandon its intense and continued devotion to the Israeli cause, joined with Russia in forcing the combined aggressors back fromEgyptian soil.
But Israel did not agree to pull its forces outof the Sinai peninsula until Egypt agreed to allow a special UN Emergency Force to administer the Sharm-el Sheikhfortress commanding the Strait of Tiran.
Characteristically, Israel scornfully refused the UNEF permission to patrolits side of the border. Only Egypt agreed to allow access to the UN forces, and it was because of this that the Gulf of Aqaba was opened to Israeli shipping from 1956 on.
The 1967 crisis emerged from the fact that, over the last few years, the Palestinian Arab refugees have begun to shiftfrom their previous bleak and passive despair, and begun to form guerrilla movements which have infiltrated the Israeli borders to carry their fight into the region of their lost homes.
Since last year, Syria has been under the control ofthe most militantly anti-imperialist government that the Middle East has seen in years. Syria's encouragement to the Palestinian guerrilla forces led Israel's frenetic leaders to threaten war upon Syria and the conquest of Damascus--threats punctuated by severe reprisal raids against Syrianand Jordanian villages. At this point. Egypt's premier,Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had been an anti-Israel blowhardfor years, but had concentrated instead ondemagogicstatist measures that wrecked Egypt's domestic economy, was challenged by the Syrians to do something concrete to help:in particular, to end UNEF control--and hence continuing Israeli shipping--in the Gulf of Aqaba.
Hence, Nasser's request for the UNEF to leave. Pro-Israeli griping at UThant's swift compliance is grotesque, when we considerthat the UN forces were there only at Egyptian request,and that lsrael has always adamantly refused to have theUN forces on its side of the border.
It was at that point.with the closing of the Strait of Tiran, that Israel evidently began to set the stage for its next blitzkrieg war.
While giving lip-service to peaceful negotiation, the Israeli government finally knuckled under to "hawk" pressure withinthe country; and the appointment of the notoriously war-mongering General Moshe Dayan as Minister of Defense was obviously the signal for the Israeli blitz attack that came afew days later.
The incredibly swift Israeli victories; the press glorification of Israeli tactics and strategy; the patent unreadiness of the Arab forces despite the hoopla; all this indicates to all but the most naive the fact that Israel launched the war of 1967--a fact that Israel scarcely bothers to deny.
One of the most repellent aspects of the 1967 slaughteris the outspoken admiration for the Israeli conquest by almost all Americans, Jew and non-Jew alike. There seems to be a sickness deep in the American soul that causes itto identify with aggression and mass murder--the swifter and more brutal the better. In all the spate of admirationf or the Israeli march, how many people were there to mourn the thousands of innocent Arab civilians murdered by the Israeli use of napalm?(...)
When this war began, the Israeli leaders proclaimed that they were not interested in "one inch' of territory; their fighting was purely defensive.
But now that Israel sits upon its conquests, after repeated violations of UN cease-fires, it sings a very different tune. Its forces still occupy all ofthe Sinai peninsula; all of Palestinian Jordan has been seized, sending another nearly 200,000 hapless Arab refugees to join their hundredsof thousands of forlorn comrades;it has seized a goodly chunk of Syria; and Israel arrogantly proclaims that it will never, never return the Old City of Jerusalem or internationalize it; Israeli seizure of all of Jerusalem is simply 'not negotiable.
'If Israel has been the aggressor in the Middle East, therole of the United States in all this has been even moreunlovely. The hypocrisy of the U. S. position is almost unbelievable--or would he if we were not familiar withU. S. foreign policy over the decades. When the war first hegan , and it looked for a moment as if Israel were indanger, the U. S. rushed in to avow its dedication to the"territorial integrity of the Middle East"--as if the bordersof 1949-67 were somehow embalmed in Holy Writ and had to be preserved at all costs.
But--as soon as it was clear that Israel had won and conquered once again, America swiftly shed its supposed cherished "principles." Nowthere is no more talk of the "territorial integrity of theMiddle East"; now it is all "realism" and the absurdity of going hack to obsolete status quo borders and the necessity for the Arabs to accept a general settlement in theMiddle East, etc.
(...) The one thing that Americans must not be lured intobelieving is that Israel is a "little" "underdog" against its mighty Arab neighbors. Israel is a European nation with aEuropean technological standard battling a primitive and undeveloped foe; furthermore.
Israel has behind it, feedingit, and financing it, the massed-might of countless Americans and West Europeans, as well as the Leviathan governments of the United States and its numerous allies and client states .Israel is no more a "gallant underdog" because of numerical inferiority than British Imperialism was a "gallant under-dog' when it conquered far more populous lands in India, Africa, and Asia.
And so, Israel now sits, occupying its swollen territory, pulverizing houses and villages containing snipers, outlawingstrikes of Arabs, killing Arab youths in the name of checking terrorism. But this very occupation, this very elephantiasis of Israel, provides the Arabs with a powerful long-range opportunity.
(...) But for the long-run, the threat is very real Israel, therefore, faces a long-run dilemma which she must someday meet. Either to continue on her present course, and,after years of mutual hostility and conflict be overthrown byArab people's guerrilla war. Or--to change direction dras-ically, to cut herself loose completely from Western imperial ties, and become simply Jewish citizens of the MiddleEast.
If she did that, then peace and harmony and justicewould at last reign in that tortured region. There is ample precedent for this peaceful coexistence. For in the centuries before 19th and 20th century Western imperialism, Jew and Arab had always lived well and peacefully togetherin the Middle East.
There is no inherent enmity or conflictbetween Arab and Jew. In the great centuries of Arab civilization in North Africa and Spain, Jews took a happyand prominent part--in contrast to their ongoing persecution by the fanatics of the Christian West. Shorn of Western influence and Western imperialism, that harmony can reignonce more."
