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Title: Aftermath Author: Noam Chomsky Date: October 1991 Language: en Topics: US foreign interventions, Middle East Source: Retrieved on 8th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/199110__/ Notes: From Z Magazine, October, 1991
In concluding its report The Challenge to the South, the South
Commission, chaired by Julius Nyerere and consisting of leading Third
World economists, government planners, and others, called for a “new
world order” that will respond to “the South’s plea for justice, equity,
and democracy in the global society” — with a touch of pathos, perhaps,
since its analysis offered little basis for such hopes.[1] Some months
later, George Bush appropriated the phrase “new world order” as part of
the rhetorical background for his war in the Gulf. The powerful
determine the rules of the game and the meaning of the rhetoric adopted
to disguise them. It is George Bush’s New World Order, not that of the
South Commission, that will prevail. Accordingly, it is not surprising
that the Third World did not join in the enthusiastic U.S. welcome for
the uplifting vision proclaimed by the President and his Secretary of
State.
In earlier articles as Bush’s war plans unfolded, I have quoted Third
World reactions, including the Iraqi democrats who were rebuffed
throughout by Washington and scrupulously excluded from the propaganda
system because of their opposition to every phase of U.S. policy: the
enthusiastic Reagan-Bush support for their gangster friend as long as he
followed orders; the rush to war and barring of the danger of a peaceful
negotiated settlement; the slaughter itself; and the support for Saddam
Hussein as he crushed the popular uprisings that Bush had called for
when it suited his purposes, then abandoned as priorities changed. To
survey Third World opinion is no simple matter; the traditional colonial
areas are of little interest to Western privilege unless they fall “out
of control,” at which point there is a quick transition from silence to
frenzied abuse. But from what information I can gather, there was broad
agreement with the interpretation of the editor of Germany’s leading
daily, Theo Sommer of Die Zeit, who saw in the U.S.-U.K. reaction to the
Gulf crisis “an unabashed exercise in national self-interest, only
thinly veiled by invocations of principle”[2] — invocations that were
proclaimed with due pomposity and self-righteousness as long as the
interests of power were served thereby.
In a typical Third World reaction, the Jesuit journal Proceso (El
Salvador) warned of the “ominous halo of hypocrisy, the seed of new
crises and resentments.” The hypocrisy “is extreme in the case of the
United States, the leader of the allied forces and the most warmongering
of them all.” Writing in the Chilean journal La Epoca under a caricature
of Bush in a bathtub filled with war toys, Uruguayan writer Mario
Benedetti agreed that Bush has “succeeded in outdoing Saddam in
hypocrisy.” “When liberation fever hits the United States,” he
continued, “the alarms sound everywhere, particularly in the Third
World,” which lacks the Western talent to turn quickly away from “the
liberated wreckage” and where it is no secret that “the abyss between
the First World and the Third World is wider with each passing day.”
There is nothing accidental, he writes, about the resemblance of Bush’s
phrase “New World Order” to Hitler’s “Neue Ordnung” and Mussolini’s
“Ordine Nuovo.” The “express intent” of Bush’s Gulf war was nothing
other than “to show both the Third World and its old and new European
allies that from now on it is the United States that orders, invades,
and dictates the law, period.” For the Third World, “the combination of
the weakening of the USSR and the [U.S.] victory in the Gulf could turn
out to be frightening…because of the breakdown of international military
equilibrium which somehow served to contain U.S. yearnings for
domination”; “the contempt that this triumph has brought about (thirty
countries against one) could stimulate even wilder imperalist
adventures.” For the South, he concludes, the only hope is to pray to
every imaginable deity to “try to convince Bush and Powell not to come
liberate us.”[3]
Few in the former colonial domains would take issue with the judgment of
the Times of India that the traditional warrior states sought a
“regional Yalta where the powerful nations agree among themselves to a
share of Arab spoils… [The West’s] conduct throughout this one month has
revealed the seamiest sides of Western civilisation: its unrestricted
appetite for dominance, its morbid fascination for hi-tech military
might, its alien’ cultures, its appalling jingoism….” The general mood
was captured by Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns of Sao Paolo, Brazil, who
wrote that in the Arab countries “the rich sided with the U.S.
government while the millions of poor condemned this military
aggression.” Throughout the Third World, he continued, “there is hatred
and fear: When will they decide to invade us,” and on what pretext?[4]
Prior to the Gulf crisis, the South Commission had given a grim though
accurate assessment of the latest phase of the 500-year European assault
against the world — whether called “the Vasco da Gama era,” “the
Columbian era,” “imperialism,” “neo-colonialism,” or the era of
“North-South conflict,” the current euphemism. There were some gestures
to Third World concerns in the 1970s, the Commission observed,
“undoubtedly spurred” by concern over “the newly found assertiveness of
the South after the rise in oil prices in 1973” — which were,
incidentally, not entirely unwelcome to the U.S. and U.K., which are
producers of high-cost oil, the home of the energy corporations that
benefited mightily from the price rise, and the recipients of much of
the flow of petrodollars (primarily the U.S.).[5] As the threat of
Southern assertiveness abated, the Commission report continues, the
industrial societies lost interest and turned to “a new form of
neo-colonialism,” monopolizing control over the world economy,
undermining the more democratic elements of the United Nations, and in
general proceeding to institutionalize “the South’s second class
status.”
Japan and continental Europe recovered from the recession of the early
1980s, though without resuming earlier growth rates. U.S. recovery
involved massive borrowing and state stimulation of the economy, mainly
through the Pentagon-based public subsidy to high technology industry,
along with a sharp increase in protectionist measures and a rise in
interest rates. This contributed to the crisis of the South, as interest
payments on the debt rose while investment and aid declined, and the
wealthy classes invested their riches in the West. There was a huge
capital flow from South to North, with effects that were generally
catastrophic, apart from the NICs of East Asia, where the state is
powerful enough to control capital flight and direct the economy
efficiently. The catastrophe of capitalism in the 1980s was mirrored,
though to a lesser extent, in Eastern Europe, contributing to the
disintegration of the Soviet tyranny and its virtual disappearance from
the world scene.
The “New World Order” is perceived in the South, not unrealistically, as
a bitter one-sided international class war, with the advanced state
capitalist economies and their transnational corporations monopolizing
the means of violence and controlling investment, capital, technology,
and planning and management decisions at the expense of the huge mass of
the population. Local elites in the Southern dependencies can share in
the spoils, including, probably, much of the ex-Nomenklatura in the
parts of the Soviet system that will revert to their traditional status.
The U.S. and U.K., which wield the whip, may well continue their decline
toward societies with notable Third World characteristics, dramatically
obvious in the inner cities and rural areas.
In looking ahead to the New World Order, it is useful to recall some
well-established truths, rarely voiced because they lack the redeeming
value of supporting privilege and power. They are, therefore, deemed
unacceptable by the vigilant guardians of political correctness, along
with such matters as the U.S. role in international terrorism and human
rights abuses, the actual functioning of the doctrinal system in
consciousness-lowering, and so on. But they merit consideration on the
part of those who hope to understand the world.
North-South relations are based on the principle that the South has a
service role. Independent nationalism, interfering with the prerogatives
of the rulers, is unacceptable, whatever its political cast. Murderous
tyrants are fine as long as they are properly obedient; Saddam Hussein
is only the most recent example. But meaningful democracy, which might
allow popular pressures on state policy, is a danger unless the
institutional foundations of business rule are so firm that basic
decision-making is safely protected from challenge. In occupied Europe
and Japan after World War II, until this result was achieved the U.S.
worked effectively to undermine labor, democratic forces, and the
anti-fascist resistance while reinstating the traditional elites,
including Nazi and fascist collaborators (simultaneously, domestic U.S.
power launched a massive and effective campaign against labor and
independent thought and politics). In the less stable societies of the
South, the conditions of business rule are often not yet securely
established. Therefore any hint of popular organization and meaningful
democracy sets off the alarm bells, often a savage reaction as well.
In these respects, nothing has changed. Thus a Latin America Strategy
Development Workshop at the Pentagon in September 1990 concludes that
current relations with the Mexican dictatorship are “extraordinarily
positive,” untroubled by stolen elections, death squads, endemic
torture, scandalous treatment of workers democracy opening’ in Mexico
could test the special relationship by bringing into office a government
more interested in challenging the U.S. on economic and nationalist
grounds,” the fundamental concern over many years. The hostility to
democracy is taken as uncontroversial — probably even unnoticed — by the
academic and other participants.[6]
Signs of successful development simply magnify the dangers of
independence and, even worse, popular organization: the “virus” might
spread and the “rotten apple” might “infect” the barrel as others are
tempted to pursue the same path — the “domino theory” of public
rhetoric. As Washington moved to overthrow the first (and last)
democratic government in Guatemala in 1953, State Department officials
warned that Guatemala “has become an increasing threat to the stability
of Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful
propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers and
peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large
foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central
American neighbors where similar conditions prevail.”[7]
Such thinking is pervasive, and understandable. It will persist, as long
as the threat of “broad social programs” of the Guatemalan variety, or
other forms of independence, has not been extinguished. From 1917 into
the 1980s, it was possible to portray the rotten apples as agents of the
Evil Empire, poised to conquer us and “take what we have,” in the words
of one of Lyndon Johnson’s laments. The paranoid fantasies were not
entirely lacking in substance. Targets of U.S. subversion and economic
warfare did, naturally, turn to the Soviet Union for support, and U.S.
intervention was constrained by the deterrent effect of Soviet power —
the “international military equilibrium which somehow served to contain
U.S. yearnings for domination” (Benedetti). The Cold War itself had
North-South dimensions that should not be ignored. Soviet domains had in
part been quasi-colonial dependencies of the West, which were removed
from the Third World and pursued an independent path, no longer
available “to complement the industrial economies of the West,” as a
prestigious study group defined the threat of Communism in 1955.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union offered a model of development that was
not without appeal in the Third World, particularly in earlier years.
The USSR was, in short, an enormous “rotten apple,” and in this case, a
menacing one as well. It is understandable, then, that leading scholars
should justify the Western invasion of the Soviet Union after the
revolution as a defensive action “in response to a profound and
potentially far-reaching intervention by the new Soviet government in
the internal affairs, not just of the West, but of virtually every
country in the world,” namely, “the Revolution’s challenge…to the very
survival of the capitalist order” (John Lewis Gaddis).[8] The same
reasoning applies to a huge country or a speck in the Caribbean:
intervention is entirely warranted in defense against a change in the
social order, interfering with the service function, and a declaration
of revolutionary intentions, particularly when there is a fear that “the
rot may spread.” Although the Sandinista “Revolution without Borders”
was a government-media fabrication, the propaganda images reflected an
authentic concern: from the perspective of a hegemonic power,
declaration of an intent to provide a model that will inspire others
amounts to aggression.
The “Communist” danger was further enhanced by their unfair advantages.
The Communists are able to “appeal directly to the masses,” President
Eisenhower complained. Our plans for “the masses” preclude any such
appeal. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in private conversation
with his brother Alan, who headed the CIA, deplored the Communist
“ability to get control of mass movements,” “something we have no
capacity to duplicate.” “The poor people are the ones they appeal to and
they have always wanted to plunder the rich.”[9] The same concerns
extended to “the preferential option for the poor” of the Latin American
bishops and other commitments to independent development or democracy —
and also to such friends as Mussolini, Trujillo, Noriega, and Saddam
Hussein when they forget their assigned role.
While the end of the Cold War frees the U.S. to exercise violence more
readily than before, there are several factors that are likely to
inhibit the resort to force. Among them are the successes of the past
years in crushing popular nationalist and reform tendencies and the
resulting demoralization of “the masses” who seek to “plunder the rich.”
In the light of these achievements, and the economic catastrophes of the
past decade, the “threat of a good example” has been notably reduced.
Limited forms of diversity and independence can be tolerated with less
concern that they will lead to meaningful change. Control can be
exercised by economic measures: structural adjustment, the IMF regimen,
selective resort to free trade measures, and so forth. And although the
narrow ideological constraints of elite Western culture protect us from
these visions, Third World observers are quite capable of perceiving the
savage retribution visited upon those who step on the toes of the
master: Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, indeed anyone who does not understand
that “What We Say Goes,” in the President’s fine words.
Another inhibiting factor is that German-led Europe and Japan have their
own priorities, which may not conform to those of the United States,
though there is a shared interest in subduing Third World independence,
and the internationalization of capital gives competition among national
states a different cast than in earlier periods. Furthermore, the
domestic base for foreign adventures has eroded, both in public
attitudes and economic base. Even with privileged access to the profits
of Gulf oil production, the long-term prospects for a mercenary state
running a global “protection racket,” as advocated in sectors of the
business press, are not too auspicious. It is, furthermore, not at all
clear that a U.S.-dominated Western hemisphere trade bloc can
effectively compete with the Japan’s Asian “Co-prosperity sphere” and
the German-dominated “New Order” in Central and Eastern Europe — the
realization of many of the dreams of Japanese and German fascism, though
in a far less virulent form, and much modified because of changes in the
international economy.
Two crucial events of the recent past are the accelerating breakup of
the Soviet system and the Gulf conflict. With regard to the former, the
U.S. is largely an observer. As a matter of course, the media must laud
George Bush’s consummate skill as a statesman and crisis manager, but
the ritual exercise lacks spirit. It is plain enough that Washington has
little impact on developments and no idea what to do as the Soviet
system lurches from one crisis to another. The response to Saddam
Hussein’s aggression, in contrast, was a Washington operation
throughout, with Britain loyally in tow, reflecting the U.S. insistence
upon sole authority in the crucial energy-producing regions of the
Middle East.
Now that the U.S. has achieved its major aims and there is no longer any
need to terrify the domestic public and whip up jingoist hysteria,
government-media rhetoric has subsided and it is easier to survey just
what happened in the misnamed “Gulf War” — misnamed, because there never
was a war at all, at least, if the concept “war” involves two sides in
combat, say, shooting at each other. That didn’t happen in the Gulf.
The crisis began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a year ago. There was
some fighting, leaving hundreds killed according to Human Rights groups.
That hardly qualifies as war. Rather, in terms of crimes against peace
and against humanity, it falls roughly into the category of the Turkish
invasion of northern Cyprus, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1978, and
the U.S. invasion of Panama. In these terms it falls well short of
Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and cannot remotely be compared with
the near-genocidal Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor, to
mention only two cases of aggression that are still in progress, with
continuing atrocities and with the crucial support of those who most
passionately professed their outrage over Iraq’s aggression.
During the subsequent months, Iraq was responsible for terrible crimes
in Kuwait, with several thousand killed and many tortured. But that is
not war; rather, state terrorism, of the kind familiar among U.S.
clients.
The second phase of the conflict began with the U.S.-U.K. attack of
January 15 (with marginal participation of others). This was slaughter,
not war. Tactics were carefully designed to ensure that there would be
virtually no combat.
The first component was an aerial attack on the civilian infrastructure,
targeting power, sewage and water systems; that is, a form of biological
warfare, designed to ensure long-term suffering and death among
civilians so that the U.S would be in a good position to attain its
political goals for the region. Since the casualties are victims of the
United States, we will never have any real idea of the scale of these
atrocities, any more than we have any serious idea of the civilian toll
in the U.S. wars in Indochina. These are not proper topics for inquiry.
This component of the attack does not qualify as war: rather it is state
terrorism on a colossal scale.
The second component of the U.S.-U.K. attack was the slaughter of Iraqi
soldiers in the desert, largely unwilling Shi’ite and Kurdish conscripts
it appears, hiding in holes in the sand or fleeing for their lives — a
picture quite remote from the Pentagon disinformation relayed by the
press about colossal fortifications, artillery powerful beyond our
imagining, vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons at the ready,
and so on. Pentagon and other sources give estimates in the range of
100,000 defenseless victims killed, about half during the air attack,
half during the air-ground attack that followed. Again, this exercise
does not qualify as war. In the words of a British observer of the U.S.
conquest of the Philippines at the turn of the century, “This is not
war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery.” The desert slaughter
was a “turkey shoot,” as some U.S. forces described it, borrowing the
term used by their forebears butchering Filipinos[10] — one of those
deeply-rooted themes of the culture that surfaces at appropriate
moments, as if by reflex.
The goal of the attack on the civilian society has been made reasonably
clear. In plain words, it was to hold the civilian population hostage to
achieve a political end: to induce some military officer to overthrow
Saddam and wield the “iron fist” as Saddam himself had done with U.S.
support before he stepped out of line; any vicious thug will do as long
as he shows proper obedience, unlike Saddam, who violated this principle
— the only one that counts, as events once again demonstrate — in August
1991. State Department reasoning was outlined with admirable clarity by
New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman. If the
society suffers sufficient pain, Friedman explained, Iraqi generals may
topple Mr. Hussein, “and then Washington would have the best of all
worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein.” The
technique of punishing Iraqi civilians may thus succeed in restoring the
happy days when Saddam’s “iron fist…held Iraq together, much to the
satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia,” not to
speak of the boss in Washington, who had no problem with the means
employed.[11]
The operation of holding a civilian population hostage while tens of
thousands die from starvation and disease raises only one problem:
unreasonable soft-hearted folk may feel some discomfort at having “sat
by and watched a country starve for political reasons,” just what will
happen, UNICEF director of public affairs Richard Reid predicted, unless
Iraq is permitted to purchase “massive quantities of food” — though it
is already far too late for the children under two, who have stopped
growing for six or seven months because of severe malnutrition, we learn
from his report in the Canadian press. But Bush’s ex-pal may help us out
of this dilemma. The Wall Street Journal observes that Iraq’s “clumsy
attempt to hide nuclear-bomb-making equipment from the U.N. may be a
blessing in disguise, U.S. officials say. It assures that the allies
[read: U.S. and U.K.] can keep economic sanctions in place to squeeze
Saddam Hussein without mounting calls to end the penalties for
humanitarian reasons.”[12] With luck, then, this huge exercise in state
terrorism may proceed unhampered by the bleeding hearts and PC
left-fascists.
In keeping with its fabled dedication to international law and morality,
the U.S. is naturally demanding that compensation to the victims of
Iraq’s crimes must have higher priority than any purchase of food that
might be allowed — under U.N. (meaning U.S.) control, of course; a
country that commits the crime of disobeying Washington has plainly lost
any claim to sovereignty. While proclaiming this stern doctrine with
suitable majesty, the Bush Administration was keeping the pressure on
Nicaragua to force these miscreants, who committed the same unspeakable
crime, to abandon their claims to reparations for a decade of U.S.
terror and illegal economic warfare as mandated by the International
Court of Justice. Nicaragua finally succumbed, a capitulation scarcely
noticed by the media, mesmerized by Washington’s lofty rhetoric about
Iraq’s responsibilities to compensate its victims.
As Third World observers have no difficulty in perceiving, the “ominous
halo of hypocrisy” can rise beyond any imaginable level without posing a
serious challenge for the cultural commissars of the West.
The third phase of the conflict began immediately after the cease-fire,
as Iraqi elite units, who had been largely spared by the U.S. attack,
proceeded to slaughter first the Shi’ites of the South and then the
Kurds of the North, with the tacit support of the Commander-in-Chief,
who had called upon Iraqis to rebel when that suited U.S. purposes, then
went fishing when the “iron fist” struck.
Returning from a March 1991 fact-finding mission, Senate Foreign
Relations Committee staff member Peter Galbraith reported that the
Administration did not even respond to Saudi proposals to assist both
Shi’ite and Kurdish rebels, and that the Iraqi military refrained from
attacking the rebels until it had “a clear indication that the United
States did not want the popular rebellion to succeed.” A BBC
investigation found that “several Iraqi generals made contact with the
United States to sound out the likely American response if they took the
highly dangerous step of planning a coup against Saddam,” but received
no support, concluding that “Washington had no interest in supporting
revolution; that it would prefer Saddam Hussein to continue in office,
rather than see groups of unknown insurgents take power.” An Iraqi
general who escaped to Saudi Arabia told the BBC that “he and his men
had repeatedly asked the American forces for weapons, ammunition and
food to help them carry on the fight against Saddam’s forces.” Each
request was refused. As his forces fell back towards U.S.-U.K.
positions, the Americans blew up an Iraqi arms dump to prevent them from
obtaining arms, and then “disarmed the rebels” (John Simpson). Reporting
from northern Iraq, ABC correspondent Charles Glass described how
“Republican Guards, supported by regular army brigades, mercilessly
shelled Kurdish-held areas with Katyusha multiple rocket launchers,
helicopter gunships and heavy artillery,” while journalists observing
the slaughter listened to Gen. Schwartzkopf boasting to his radio
audience that “We had destroyed the Republican Guard as a militarily
effective force” and eliminated the military use of helicopters.[13]
This is not quite the stuff of which heroes are fashioned, so the story
was finessed at home, though it could not be totally ignored,
particularly the attack on the Kurds, with their Aryan features and
origins; the Shi’ites, who appear to have suffered even worse atrocities
right under the gaze of Stormin’ Norman, raised fewer problems, being
mere Arabs. Again, this slaughter hardly qualifies as war.
In the most careful analysis currently available, the Greenpeace
International Military Research Group estimates total Kuwaiti casualties
at 2–5,000; and Iraqi civilian casualties at 5–15,000 during the air
attack, unknown during the ground attack, 20–40,000 during the civil
conflict, perhaps another 50,000 civilian deaths from April through July
along with another 125,000 deaths among Shi’ite and Kurdish
refugees.[14]
In brief, from August 1990 through July 1991, there was little that
could qualify as “war.” Rather, there was a brutal Iraqi takeover of
Kuwait followed by various forms of slaughter and state terrorism, the
scale corresponding roughly to the means of violence in the hands of the
perpetrators, and their impunity. The distinction between war, on the
one hand, and slaughter and state terrorism, on the other, is one that
should be observed.
Despite its substantial victory, Washington has not yet achieved “the
best of all worlds,” as Friedman observes, because no suitable clone of
the Beast of Baghdad has yet emerged to serve the interests of the U.S.
and its regional allies. Needless to say, not everyone shares the
Washington-media conception of “the best of all worlds.” Well after the
hostilities ended, the Wall Street Journal, to its credit, broke ranks
and offered space to a spokesman for the Iraqi democratic opposition,
London-based banker Ahmad Chalabi. He described the outcome as “the
worst of all possible worlds” for the Iraqi people, whose tragedy is
“awesome.”[15] From the perspective of Iraqi democrats, remote from that
of Washington and New York, restoration of the “iron fist” would not be
“the best of all worlds.”
The U.S. propaganda system did face a certain problem as the Bush
administration lent its support to Saddam’s crushing of the internal
opposition. The task was the usual one: To portray Washington’s stance,
no matter how atrocious, in a favorable light. That was not easy,
particularly after months of ranting about George Bush’s magnificent
show of principle and supreme courage in facing down the reincarnation
of Attila the Hun just as he was about to take over the world. But the
transition was quick, smooth, and impressive. True, few can approach our
devotion to the most august principles. But our moral purity is tempered
with an understanding of the need for “pragmatism” and “stability,”
useful concepts that translate as “Doing what we choose.”
In a typical example of the genre, New York Times Middle East
correspondent Alan Cowell attributed the failure of the rebels to the
fact that “very few people outside Iraq wanted them to win.” Note that
the concept “people” is used here in the conventional Orwellian sense,
meaning: “people who count”; many featherless bipeds wanted them to win,
but “serious people” did not. The “allied campaign against President
Hussein brought the United States and its Arab coalition partners to a
strikingly unanimous view,” Cowell continues: “whatever the sins of the
Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his
country’s stability than did those who have suffered his
repression.”[16]
This version of the facts, the standard one, merits a few questions. To
begin with, who are these “Arab coalition partners”? Answer: six are
family dictatorships, established by the Anglo-American settlement to
manage Gulf oil riches in the interests of the foreign masters, what the
British imperial managers called an “Arab Facade” for the real rulers.
The seventh is Syria’s Hafez el-Assad, a minority-based tyrant and
murderer who is indistinguishable from Saddam Hussein. The last of the
coalition partners, Egypt, is the only one that could be called “a
country.” Though a tyranny, it has a degree of internal freedom.
We therefore naturally turn to the semi-official press in Egypt to
verify the Times report of the “strikingly unanimous view.” The article
is datelined Damascus, April 10. The day before, Deputy Editor
Salaheddin Hafez of Egypt’s leading daily, al-Ahram, commented on
Saddam’s demolition of the rebels “under the umbrella of the Western
alliance’s forces.” U.S. support for Saddam Hussein proved what Egypt
had been saying all along, Hafez wrote. American rhetoric about “the
savage beast, Saddam Hussein,” was merely a cover for the true goals: to
cut Iraq down to size and establish U.S. hegemony in the region. The
West turned out to be in total agreement with the beast on the need to
“block any progress and abort all hopes, however dim, for freedom or
equality and for progress towards democracy,” working in “collusion with
Saddam himself” if necessary. Speaking abroad at the same time, Ahmad
Chalabi bitterly condemned U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s repression,
attributing it to the traditional U.S. policy of “supporting
dictatorships to maintain stability.”[17]
The Egyptian reaction hardly comes as a surprise. Though one could learn
little about the matter here, the “victory celebration” in Egypt had
been “muted and totally official,” correspondent Hani Shukrallah of the
London Mideast Mirror reported from Cairo. Post-cease fire developments
“seem to have intensifed the [popular] feelings of anger against the
leading members of the anti-Iraq coalition,” inspired as well by the
report of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights that “at least 200
Egyptians have been arrested in Kuwait and that many have been subjected
to torture on legally unsubstantiated charges of collaboration.” The
Egyptian press had also bitterly condemned the U.S. conditions imposed
on Iraq, a transparent effort to insure U.S.-Israeli military dominance,
al-Ahram charged. enemy’ than allies’,” Shukrallah reported as the
ground attack ended, particularly the poor and students, three of whom
were killed by police in an anti-government demonstration. “Not in over
a decade have Egyptians felt and expressed so intently their hostility
to the U.S., Israel and the West,” political scientist Ahmad Abdallah
observed.[18]
Many Egyptians also expressed satisfaction when Scud missiles hit
Israel.[19] Lacking Western enlightenment, they find it hard to
understand why it is highly meritorious to demolish Iraq because of its
failure to withdraw from Kuwait under the U.S. terms of unconditional
surrender, while it is a reversion to Nazism to administer to Israel
what amounts to a slap on the wrist, in comparison, for ignoring the
order of the U.N. Security Council to withdraw from Lebanon (March 1978,
and subsequently) and other condemnations of its terrorism and
repression. Backward cultures fail to see what is so obvious to us:
orders to Iraq are to be obeyed; orders to Israel demonstrate the
inveterate anti-Semitism of the world, and are therefore to be
disregarded, just as World Court condemnations of the U.S. merely
discredit this “hostile forum,” as the New York Times and others
explain.
It is true that there was some regional support for the U.S. stance
apart from the friendly club of Arab tyrants. Turkish President Turgut
Ozal doubtless nodded his head in agreement. He had made use of the
opportunity offered by the Gulf crisis to step up attacks on his own
Kurdish population, confident that the U.S. media would judiciously
refrain from reporting the bombings of Kurdish villages and the hundreds
of thousands of refugees in flight, trying to survive the cold winter in
the mountains without aid or provisions. The reader of the European
press, human rights reports, or this journal and a few other exotic
sources, could learn something of the Winter 1990–91 exploits of the man
who George Bush hailed as “a protector of peace” who has joined all of
us who “stand up for civilized values around the world.” But those who
depend on the mass or prestige media were shielded from such improper
thoughts.
The U.S. stance also received support in Israel, where many commentators
agreed with retiring Chief-of-Staff Dan Shomron that it is preferable
for Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Iraq. “We are all with Saddam,”
one headline read, reporting the view of Labor dove Avraham Burg that
“in the present circumstances Saddam Hussein is better than any
alternative” and that “a Shi’ite empire” from Iran to the territories
would be harmful to Israel. Another leading dove, Ran Cohen of Ratz,
also “wants Saddam to continue to rule, so that perhaps the hope for any
internal order will be buried” and the Americans will stay in the region
and impose a “compromise.” Suppression of the Kurds is a welcome
development, an influential right-wing commentator explained in the
Jerusalem Post, because of “the latent ambition of Iran and Syria to
exploit the Kurds and create a territorial, military, contiguity between
Teheran and Damascus — a contiguity which embodies danger for Israel”
(Moshe Zak, senior editor of the mass-circulation daily Ma’ariv).[20]
None of this makes particularly good copy. Best to leave it in oblivion.
The “strikingly unanimous view” supporting U.S. “pragmatism,” then,
includes offices in Washington and New York and London, and U.S. clients
in the region, but leaves out a few others — including, notably, Iraqi
democrats in exile and the Arab population of the region, insofar as
they have any voice in the U.S. client states. Respectable opinion in
the United States could not care less, in keeping with the traditional
disparagement of the culturally deprived lower orders.
The Gulf “war” having receded into history, we turn to new triumphs, the
primary one in the region being James Baker’s skillful exploitation of
the “window of opportunity” afforded by the U.S. victory to advance the
“peace process.” His achievements, so the story goes, offer the first
real opportunity to advance the long-sought U.S. goals of “territorial
compromise” and “land for peace,” now that the “rejectionists” are in
disarray.
To understand what is happening, we have to begin by translating the
rhetoric of political discourse into English. As is familiar, the term
“peace process” refers to the process of achieving U.S. goals; it has
nothing particularly to do with efforts to reach peace. The
“rejectionists” are not those who reject the right to national
self-determination of one or the other of the contending parties in the
Israel-Palestine conflict; rather, only those who reject Israeli claims
qualify as rejectionists; the indigenous population of the former
Palestine lack any comparable rights because they offer nothing to U.S.
power, neither military force, nor wealth, nor anything else that serves
to raise the creatures that crawl the earth to the rank of “people.” In
fact, they are a damned nuisance, stirring up “radical nationalist”
(meaning, disobedient) tendencies in the Arab world.
Turning to “land for peace” and “territorial compromise,” these terms
refer to the traditional position of the Israeli Labor Party (known in
the U.S. as “the doves”), which grants Israel control over the usable
land and resources of the occupied territories but leaves the population
stateless or under Jordanian administration, so that Israel does not
have to confront “the demographic problem.” The latter is another term
of art, referring to the problem of too many Arabs in “the sovereign
State of the Jewish people” in Israel or the diaspora, not the state of
its citizens. Moderate Palestinian leaders regard these Labor Party
proposals as “much worse than the Likud’s autonomy plan” under Israeli
sovereignty, Israeli dove Shmuel Toledano observes, agreeing that this
judgment is “accurate.”[21]
The U.S. has always preferred Labor Party rejectionism. It is more
rational than the variety espoused by the governing Likud party, which
has no real provision for the population of the occupied territories,
except eventual “transfer” (meaning expulsion) in some manner. In the
past, Palestinian refusal to agree to this U.S.-Israeli plan was
condemned as “rejectionism,” but the term has recently taken on an even
more extreme twist to meet current contingencies. By now, the New York
Times editors condemn Arafat’s “rejectionism” in demanding that the U.S.
allow the PLO to select a Palestinian delegation and guarantee that
Israel will give up some occupied land — “the old rejectionist tunes of
Middle Eastern politics,” correspondent Judith Miller adds.[22] Anything
short of abject capitulation to the masters, and national suicide with a
friendly smile, counts as “rejectionism.”
Decoding the rhetoric of political discourse, we see a picture that
looks like this. The U.S. triumph in the Gulf has enabled it to
establish the rejectionist position it has maintained in international
isolation (apart from Israel). The peace process that the world has
sought for many years, with surprising unanimity, can now be consigned
to the ash heap of history. The U.S. can at last run its own conference,
completely excluding its rivals Europe and Japan, always a major goal of
U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East, as Kissinger observed. With the
Soviet Union gone from the scene, Syria has accepted the fact that the
U.S. rules the region alone and has abandoned what is called its
“rejectionist stance” in U.S. rhetoric. In this case, the term refers to
Syria’s support for the international consensus calling for settlement
on the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders and full
guarantees for all states in the region, including Israel and a new
Palestinian state. Those bemused by mere history will recall that these
were the terms of the 1976 Security Council resolution proposed by
Syria, Jordan and Egypt, with PLO backing, but vetoed by the U.S. and
therefore out of official history along with subsequent efforts in the
same vein, such annoyances as Egyptian President Sadat’s 1971 offer of a
full peace treaty offering nothing to the Palestinians (rejected by
Israel with U.S. backing), and much else that lacks ideological
serviceability.
Another terminological device is the insistence that state-to-state
negotiations are the acid test of sincere dedication to a just peace.
Israel has always advocated exactly this, thus passing the test with
flying colors, as we expect from the state that the New York Times
describes as “the symbol of human decency.” The reasoning behind this
condition is transparent: it excludes the Palestinians from the start,
and thus incorporates the strict rejectionism of the U.S. and Israel
within the very framework of negotiations. Enlightened opinion in the
U.S. therefore agrees that it is right and just. For essentially the
same reason, the U.S. and Israel have always blocked an international
conference and demanded that the PLO must be excluded. Virtually any
participant in an international conference would express at least token
support for Palestinian rights, a sour note that must be silenced. And
since the PLO will, naturally, advocate such rights, it has never been
accepted as an interlocutor by either Israel or the U.S. — including the
period of the “negotiations” between the U.S. and the P.L.O., an utter
fraud, as was well-understood by the Israeli leadership. The facts have
been efficiently suppressed here, but are known at least to readers of
this journal, so I will not repeat them.[23]
There has long been a tacit alliance between the “Arab Facade” that
manages the energy system and the regional gendarmes that provide
protection from nationalist currents — Israel among them, alongside of
Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan — with U.S.-British power on call if needed,
and various modifications as conditions change (e.g., the fall of the
Shah). The tacit alliance is coming quite close to the surface now that
Arab nationalism has been dealt yet another crushing blow, thanks to the
murderous gangster who disobeyed orders, and PLO tactics of more than
the usual foolishness. The Arab rulers therefore have less need than
before to respond to popular pressures and make pro-Palestinian
gestures; accordingly, the prospects for U.S. rejectionism have advanced
several notches.
The U.S.-run “peace conference” will be permitted to discuss only one
topic, as James Baker made clear and explicit in 1989: the Shamir Plan,
actually the Shamir-Peres Plan of the Likud-Labor coalition, then
governing. The basic terms of this Plan, it will be recalled, are that
there can be no “additional Palestinian state” (Jordan already being
one) and no “change in the status of Judea, Samaria and Gaza other than
in accordance with the basic guidelines of the [Israeli] Government,”
which exclude any Palestinian rights. Palestinians must, furthermore, be
denied even the right to select their own representatives to discuss
their capitulation to U.S.-Israeli terms (no PLO); and there will be
“free elections” under Israeli military rule with much of the
Palestinian leadership in prison camps without charges. These terms
would be regarded as a sick joke if they were not advocated by the U.S.
and its client.
There remain, however, some problems in implementing this project,
notably the recalcitrance of both Shamir and Peres, who lead the two
major parties (though Labor is in serious decline). Shamir has
repeatedly dragged his feet, and Peres is trying to outflank Shamir from
the jingoist extreme (what is called “the right”). The difficulties with
Shamir are familiar: he is the preferred scapegoat for the media, and
his recalcitrance offers the opportunity to present Washington’s extreme
rejectionist position as a “middle ground,” suitably “moderate” and
“pragmatic.” But it is harder to deal with the stand of the Labor party,
traditionally presented as “the good guys” who line up with U.S.
positions. Shimon Peres, in particular, has been designated by the media
as a man of “healthy pragratism” and a leading dove, deeply troubled by
the lack of a “peace movement among the Arab people” such as “we have
among the Jewish people,” to sample a few of the fairy tales relayed by
the New York Times and its Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Thomas
Friedman.[24]
Peres’s current stand is familiar in Labor Party annals. Leading figures
in the Labor Party had opposed Menahem Begin’s acceptance of the Camp
David agreement, a great boon to Israeli power because it removed the
sole Arab deterrent (Egypt) from the conflict, thus enabling Israel to
accelerate its integration of the occupied territories and attack
Lebanon, with massive U.S. assistance. But the agreement compelled
Israel to yield settlements that Labor had established in Egyptian
territory, eliciting opposition among the top party ranks. Much the same
is true today. In the Hebrew press, Knesset Member Yossi Sarid, regarded
as a leading dove, writes that in a meeting of the Labor Party Committee
on Foreign and Security Affairs, Peres sought to undermine any positive
response to the conciliatory stance of Syria that had been welcomed by
Prime Minister Shamir. “He, Peres, is attacking Shamir from the right,”
Uzi Baram of the Labor Party reported. On most matters, Sarid continues,
the Labor Party is following the Likud lead, but on the matter of the
Golan Heights, Peres is mimicking the fringe rightwing Ha-Tehiya party,
denouncing any negotiations with Syria as a trap that must be avoided.
Peres’s Labor Party rival Yitzhak Rabin took the same position at the
meeting. “The stand of the two with regard to the Golan Heights is
rejectionist to the point of despair,” Sarid writes. Earlier, Rabin had
denounced the Baker conference plan as “a deadly trap [for Israel],
while Peres demanded that Israel not relinquish the Golan Heights under
any circumstances,” the press reported. These are matters of no small
moment, since, as the military command and military correspondents have
been emphasizing, failure to reach an agreement with Syria on the Golan
Heights is likely to lead to war in the not-too-distant future.[25]
Peres’s stand was in accord with the largest sector of the Kibbutz
Movement (Ha-TAKAM), which called for “permanent rule over the Golan
Heights” by Israel, and steps for further development of the
Heights.[26]
In fact, there has never been any serious difference between the two
major political groupings on the matter of Palestinian rights, which
both reject. The U.S. has always backed them in this rejectionist
stance. The official reasons are hardly worth even refuting. The real
reasons are that a Palestinian state, even if it lacked a pistol or an
ally anywhere, would control its own land and resources, and that the
U.S. and Israel will not permit. For many years, it has been well-known
that Israel relies heavily on West Bank water; control over water has
also always been a major reason for Israel’s concern over the Golan
Heights and southern Lebanon, and any Syrian or Jordanian development
projects in the region. Furthermore, some of the most popular suburbs
are in the West Bank (including the vastly expanded area called
“Jerusalem”). Israel has also benefited from the supercheap Palestinian
labor force and a controlled market (meanwhile preventing any
independent development), though these needs will reduce if the Arab
boycott officially ends, and if enough Soviet Jews can be forced to
Israel to do the dirty work that has been assigned to Palestinians.
The issue is not Israel’s survival or even its security, which would not
be threatened by a Palestinian state. As David Ben-Gurion observed in
December 1948, “an Arab state in Western Palestine [that is, West of the
Jordan] would be less dangerous than a state linked to Transjordan [now
Jordan], and maybe tomorrow to Iraq.” Nothing that has happened since
has changed that assessment, and an Israel within the
internationally-recognized borders could well be integrated into the
region as its most technologically advanced and military powerful
element. The problem lies elsewhere. It is that under such arrangements,
Israel could not “exist according to the scale, spirit, and quality she
now embodies,” as General Ezer Weizmann explained in justification of
Israel’s decision to launch the 1967 war by attacking Egypt, at a time
when he was air force commander and one of the top military
planners.[27]
To force Soviet Jews to Israel, it is necessary to gain U.S. cooperation
in barring their entry. That is readily obtained, with the support of
those who had been vociferously calling on the Soviets to “let my people
go” — as long as they go where we tell them to. The Jerusalem Post
quotes Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, a ranking member of the
House immigration, refugee and international law committee, who said on
August 15 that there would be no increase in the ceiling on Soviet
immigration (50,000, with “some 40,000 slots reserved for Jews”). “This
comes as a relief to absorption officials [in Israel], who worry that
Soviet aliya [“ascent” to Israel] would drop-off dramatically if the
U.S. allows more Soviet Jews in,” the Post news report continues.
“American Jews and Israel,” Schumer explained, “both seem happy with the
current equilibrium,” effectively barring non-Jews from the U.S.
altogether and restricting Jewish immigration sufficiently to ensure
that many will be compelled to go to Israel against their will.[28]
Nevertheless, there are some clouds on the horizon. Ha’aretz reports
that a Jewish organization was formed in the United States to campaign
for admission of Russian Jews. This dangerous development led to a
closed debate of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, where participants
“expressed sharp opposition” to any such plan and agreed that “the other
Jewish bodies in the United States should unite to sabotage this
attempt, which might harm the immigration of Jews to Israel.” These
moves extend pressures of many years on American Jewish communities not
to provide assistance to refugees from the Soviet Union. Prime Minister
Devid Levy was sent to Germany to induce its Government to stop
providing refugee status to Soviet Jews. “Our policy…is that Jews should
go to Israel,” not here, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy said in
Bonn. Michael Kleiner, head of the Immigration and Absorption Department
of the Knesset, “sharply attacked the decision of the German government
to permit Russian Jews to enter Germany,” the Hebrew press reported.
Israel is also reported to have persuaded the Soviet Union to deprive
departing Jews of Soviet citizenship, to bar return there, a growing
problem as many Russian Jews seek to leave Israel despite the serious
impediments imposed by its government, including severe financial
liabilities.[29]
Israel will never agree to the establishment of an independent
Palestinian state unless the U.S. withdraws the huge subsidy that
maintains it as a wealthy Western society. And that is unlikely.
Israel’s services as a “strategic asset” have been highly valued for
thirty years, with roots extending beyond. The Israeli lobby (not all
Jewish, by any means), with its political clout and its finely-honed
techniques of defamation, slander, and intimidation is highly effective
in containing discussion within the narrow framework of U.S.-Israeli
rejectionism and support for Israeli power and repression.
In contrast, the Palestinians, as noted, offer the U.S. nothing, and
there is no domestic lobby pressuring for their rights. What is more,
anti-Arab racism is endemic, so rampant as to be unnoticed. The concept
of “rejectionism,” mentioned above, is demonstration enough, with its
unquestioned assumption that Jews have rights denied in principle to
Palestinians. The same is true of the standard assumption, also taken as
uncontroversial, that Palestinians should not even have the minimal
right to select their own representatives to negotiate their
capitulation. An editorial in the liberal Boston Globe calmly observes
that the “ultimate control” of terrorists who take hostages is
“extermination,” referring, of course, to Arab hostage-takers, not to
Israel with its hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian hostages held under
grotesque conditions to ensure compliance with Israel’s terrorist army
in South Lebanon or to induce Lebanese terrorists to release Israeli
soldiers captured in the course of Israeli aggression, not to speak of
Palestinians kidnapped on the high seas or the tens of thousands who
have been jailed without charges in the occupied territories. In the
same journal, a lead op-ed derides the “frenzy” of Arab politics which
“expresses the resentments of a civilization which has at once been left
behind and overwhelmed by modernity” and which must be helped to
“accommodate to reality” (Martin Peretz, who reveals his own grasp of
reality by accusing Baker of “a fixed animus to the Jewish state”).[30]
One can imagine the reaction to a call for “extermination” of Jews or
similar derisive commentary about Jewish culture.
The approved current practice is sanctimonious and patronizing
condemnation of the Palestinians for having applauded Saddam Hussein,
and for PLO support for Iraq against the U.S. attack (while calling for
Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait). Therefore, American and Israeli
hypocrites argue, the Palestinians have abdicated their right to
participate in determining their own fate. Let us put aside the fact
that that right had been forcefully rejected by the United States and
both Israeli political groupings long before the invasion of Kuwait; one
will search far for a U.S. or Israeli commentator in the mainstream who
was willing to grant Palestinians even the right to select their own
representatives, a right explicitly denied in the Baker-Shamir-Peres
plan. Let us consider, however, what the same logic implies about
Israel, which not only applauds but directly participates in horrifying
atrocities in Latin America, Africa and Asia, not to speak of its loyal
support for U.S. aggression in Indochina and elsewhere, and its own
shameful crimes. The conclusions are obvious enough, but, again, fail
the test of political correctness, and will therefore not be drawn in a
well-disciplined and deeply conformist culture.
For Washington’s purposes, it is not of great importance that the “peace
conference” succeed. If it does, the U.S. will have rammed through its
traditional rejectionism, having sucessfully rebuffed the near-unanimous
world support for an authentic political settlement. If that comes
about, it will be hailed as another triumph for our great Leader, a
renewed demonstration of our high-minded benevolence and virtue. The
other possibility is that the “peace process” will fail, in which case
we will read of “a classic cultural clash between American and Middle
Eastern instincts,” a conflict between Middle Eastern fanaticism and
Baker’s “quintessentially American view of the world: that with just a
little bit of reasonableness these people should be able to see that
they have a shared interest in peace that overrides their historical
antipathies” (Thomas Friedman).[31] It’s a win-win situation for U.S.
power.
The “peace process” aside, there is not a great deal that can be brought
forth to illustrate U.S. achievements in the Gulf. This too is not much
of a problem; as state priorities shift, respectable folk follow suit,
turning to approved concerns. But it would have been too much to allow
the August 2 anniversary to pass without notice. A last-ditch effort was
therefore necessary to portray the outcome as a Grand Victory. Even with
the journalistic achievements of the past year, such as the suppression
of the possibilities for a peaceful negotiated settlement and the
rigorous exclusion of Iraqi democrats and world opinion generally, it
was no simple matter to chant the praises of our leader as we survey the
scene of two countries devastated, hundreds of thousands of corpses with
the toll still mounting, an ecological catastrophe, and the Beast of
Baghdad firmly in power thanks to the tacit support of the
Bush-Baker-Schwartzkopf team.
It is a relief to discover that even this onerous task was not beyond
the capacity of the cultural commissars. In its anniversary editorial,
the New York Times editors dismissed the qualms of “the doubters,”
concluding that Mr. Bush had acted wisely: he “avoided the quagmire and
preserved his two triumphs: the extraordinary cooperation among
coalition members and the revived self-confidence of Americans,” who
“greeted the Feb. 28 cease-fire with relief and pride — relief at
miraculously few U.S. casualties and pride in the brilliant performance
of the allied forces” (NYT, Aug. 2, 1991). Surely these triumphs far
outweigh the “awesome tragedies” in the region.
These are chilling words. One can readily understand the reaction of the
non-people of the world.
[1] The Challenge to the South, Report of the South Commission (Oxford,
1990), 287.
[2] Guardian (London), April 13, 1991.
[3] Editorial, Proceso, Jan. 23, 1991. Benedetti, La Epoca, May 4, 1991.
[4] Z, May 1991. Foreword, Thomas Fox, Iraq (Sheed & Ward, 1991), ix.
[5] On these matters, see my Towards a New Cold War (Pantheon, 1982).
[6] Latin America Strategy Development Workshop, Sept. 26 & 27, 1990,
minutes, 3. Andrew Reding, “Mexico’s Democratic Challenge,” World Policy
Journal (Spring 1991).
[7] Quoted by Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope (Princeton, 1991), 365.
[8] John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (Oxford, 1987), 10.
[9] Eisenhower to Harriman, quoted in Richard H. Immerman, Diplomatic
History (Summer 1990). John Foster Dulles, Telephone Call to Allen
Dulles, June 19, 1958, “Minutes of telephone conversations of John
Foster Dulles and Christian Herter,” Eisenhower Library, Abilene KA.
[10] Luzviminda Francisco and Jonathan Fast, Conspiracy for Empire
(Quezon City, 1985), 302, 191.
[11] NYT, July 7, 1991.
[12] Kathy Blair, Toronto Globe and Mail, June 17, 1991; WSJ, July 5,
1991.
[13] Spectator (London), Aug. 10, April 13, 1991.
[14] Greenpeace press release, July 23, 1991; Environet.
[15] WSJ, April 8, 1991.
[16] NYT, April 11, 1991.
[17] Al-Ahram, April 9, 1991. Mideast Mirror, 10 April, 15 March, 1991.
[18] Mideast Mirror, 27 March, 26 March, 27 February, 1991.
[19] Personal correspondence, Egypt.
[20] Ron Ben-Yishai, interview with Shomron, Ha’aretz, March 29; Shalom
Yerushalmi, “We are all with Saddam,” Kol Ha’ir, April 4; Jerusalem
Post. April 4, 1991.
[21] Ha’aretz, March 8, 1991.
[22] Editorial, NYT, Aug. 8; Miller, NYT, Aug. 11, 1991.
[23] See my articles “The Trollope Ploy and Middle East Diplomacy,” “The
Art of Evasion: Diplomacy in the Middle East,” Z, March 1989, Jan. 1990,
and my Necessary Illusions (South End, 1989).
[24] For details, see Necessary Illusions.
[25] Sarid, Ha’aretz, Aug. 1; Hana Kim, Hadashot, July 23, 1991.
[26] Nahman Gilboa, Al-Hamishmar, July 7, 1991.
[27] Ben-Gurion’s diaries, quoted by Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the
Jordan (Columbia, 1988), 364. Weizmann, Ha’aretz, March 20, 1972. On
Israel’s decision for war, see now Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous
Liaison (Harper Collins, 1991), an important and informative study, as
indicated by the hysterical and infantile reviews in the New York Times
and other major journals (for some amusing examples, see David
Schoenbaum, NYT Book Review, Aug. 18, 1991; John Yemma, Boston Globe,
Aug. 15, 1991).
[28] JP, Aug. 16, 1991.
[29] Ha’aretz, Feb. 18, May 19; Yediot Ahronot, March 15; Christian
Science Monitor, July 29, 1991.
[30] Editorial, BG, Aug. 15; Peretz, Aug. 9, 1991.
[31] NYT, May 19, 17, 1991.