Why the Iraqis May Resist the Peace
By Jack Miles, Beliefnet, April 10, 2003
Seven reasons why Iraqis didn't welcome the troops at first--and why they'll be halting partners in a new Iraq -- As the invasion of Iraq reaches its climax with the sieges of Baghdad and Basra, some have been surprised that Iraqi civilians have not welcomed our troops as liberators. American officials blame the restrained reaction on fear of the regime. But there are other factors as well, not discussed by the military pundits, that contribute to Iraqi ambivalence and may matter even more during the long occupation than during the short war.  1. America's only great-power ally is Britain. Britain is the former colonial ruler in Iraq. America succeeds Britain much like it succeeded France in Vietnam. The New Yorker quotes the March 6 Iraq Daily: "The U.S. Army Generals Dream of the British Vanished Empire." The language is clumsy, but the sentiment is revealing. In World War I, a war at least as vividly remembered in Iraq as the Civil War is remembered in the American south, Britain's siege of Baghdad cost uncounted thousands of Iraqi lives (as well as an astounding 33,000 British lives).... 2. America's base of operations and closest Arab military ally is Kuwait. President Bush, evoking post-World War II Germany and Japan, has boasted that American occupiers leave behind "constitutions and parliaments." But in the first Gulf War, our announced purpose was the restoration of the Kuwaiti monarch. After ten years of intense American influence in Kuwait, what result do Iraqis see? Kuwait's ruling al-Sabah clan confers and revokes the powers of the country's paper parliament at its royal pleasure and without American objection....3. America's image and Israel's are indistinguishable. Americans may not realize it, but by condoning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, they have made their own country's ethical reputation in the Middle East inseparable from Israel's. Arabs take Israel's treatment of its Arab subjects, the Palestinians, as an indication of America's attitude toward Arabs in general. If the American occupation of Iraq turns out to be like the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it will be a thing of barbed wire, bypass roads, curfews, checkpoints, shutdowns, and expropriation of land and natural resources....

A Replay of Israel’s Lebanon Adventure?
By Dr. Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed, Arab News, April 11, 2003
JEDDAH, 11 April 2003 — Twenty years ago, the Israeli Army rolled into Beirut promising their people liberation from the PLO threat and their Lebanese allies victory in the raging civil war. In the event, none of the promises made were kept. I was a high school student then caught in the mayhem and not able to find a way back home. I will never forget the sight of Israeli soldiers riding their tanks into the fashionable Hamra district. The soldiers sauntered on both sides of the rumbling machines, stopped at famous cafes like Modka, and ordered the famous Austrian chocolate blend. They offered to pay in shekels, but the waiter refused their money. They were the victors and Beirut was the first Arab capital to fall after independence. West Beirut at the time was indeed under the yoke of the PLO, which had set up a state within a state. I remember queuing for hours at the local PLO office to get a coupon that would allow me to buy two pounds of sugar at exorbitant prices. I thought it humiliating to have to go through the madness and never liked sugar since. To this day, I pass on the dessert. There was a sense of doom pervading the city. This was strange since we had been there under shelling from civil war combatants for over two years and one more army marching through should have been par for the course. It wasn’t. Most of us, perhaps because we did not fully understand the implications, tried to live with it. Khalil Hawi, the prominent Arab poet of the day, committed suicide before the Israelis reached his block of buildings about a mile down from where we were. He was an elderly man then and was not in fighting form. By refusing to live under occupation, he did manage to put us all to shame to this day.

The president's real goal in Iraq
By Jay Bookman, Information Clearing House,  
The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence. The pieces just didn't fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing. In recent days, those missing pieces have finally begun to fall into place. As it turns out, this is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions. This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were. Once that is understood, other mysteries solve themselves. For example, why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled? Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran.

Roadmaps to devastation
By Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 10 -16 April 2003
The only discernible roadmap is that linking the aggression in Iraq with that in Palestine -- UK Prime Minister Tony Blair hopes that the US administration would publish its roadmap for resolving the Palestinian issue before the end of the war on Iraq. Perhaps, he reckons, the roadmap would alleviate some of the horror bound to take place during the siege of Baghdad. The roadmap, Blair hopes, would calm the world conscience and pacify the Arabs. Blair wants to deliver something that may restore him to the European fold and hopes the roadmap would do the trick. Some Arabs agree. They are mostly Anglophiles, people who are accustomed to the British colonial ways, people who can express admiration for Prince Charles -- who can be just as silly as they are -- and for Tony Blair, his politics notwithstanding. These people speak endlessly of the roadmap. They have turned it into a mantra, just as "implementing Resolution 242" used to be, and just as after the 1967 war, when everyone spoke about "removing the effects of the aggression". To this day, mind you, the effects of the 1967 aggression have not been removed. The US administration, now in a grumpy mood, is reluctant to give the Arabs even the most evasive of sugar-coated promises. Denied their daily palliatives, the Arabs are now beholden to those moments in which the roadmap is mentioned, even in passing, even senselessly. The Arab media monitors George W Bush's statements in search of a sign. Arab journalists keep track of Bush's every stutter. Each time he takes the helicopter to Camp David, and each time he addresses the coast guards in Philadelphia, the Arab press is there, trying to read his lips. Will he just threaten Iraq and commend the troops for their valiant advance on Baghdad and their imminent liberation of the Iraqi people? Or will he add the magic word -- the roadmap? And if the magic word is uttered, God help us. Torrents of analyses, cascades of questions would follow. What does Bush mean by this particular phrasing? Why at this time in particular? Will the US publish the roadmap? Or will it succumb to Israeli pressure and keep it under its hat a bit longer? And, if Bush were to publish the roadmap, what would Israel do?

Racism inherent in 'Jewish State.' Equality should not be negotiable
By Dave Kersting, IndyMedia, April 12, 2003
The major "anti-war" organizations, such as A.N.S.W.E.R. and United for Peace, have have also shown morally fatal compromise with racist violence, in their systematic downplay of the Zionist ethnic-cleansing at the root and core of US-Israeli provocation and Middle East destabilization. Nearly all the old-school "anti-war" leadership groups have either been dominated by Zionists, or have made the explicitly racist error of silencing any anti-racist position, which might "alienate" the Zionists and thus "divide the movement." -- Rabbi Joel Timmerman writes: "There are several millions of Jews living in the United States. The bulk of us are Reformed Jews. A much smaller percentage of American Jews are Zionists. These miserable, vicious and ideological creatures have nothing to do with the great majority of American Jews."   Dave Kersting comments: Rabbi Timmerman's letter is refreshing. His distinct separation of "Zionists" from "the great majority of American Jews" serves to help Jews distance themselves from Zionism, as its inevitable realities keep showing themselves and stabbing our consciences. But let's be clear: Who is Rabbi Timmerman referring to, in his contempt for "Zionists"? A "Zionist," by the universal, dictionary, and idiomatic definition, is any person, whether "Jewish" or not, who calls for a preferentially "Jewish" state in Palestine. In other words, those who ask for a "two-state" solution (as anything more than an extremely regrettable interim measure) are Zionists. Their call for continued ethnic prejudice, forced perpetuation of ethnic-cleansing, and apartheid, thoroughly fits the definitions of "Zionism" and "violent racism." It is perhaps THE bizarre political fluke of our era that such classic racists, in our time and place, have been able to pose as "progressives" and "peace activists" - and so to eviscerate genuine, equality-based peace efforts. Racism is very easy to define, and no amount of wishful subjectivity can distinguish a "soft" form of racism from the "bad" kind.

The clock is ticking
By Yossi Beilin, Haaretz, April 12, 2003
The opinion piece penned this week by Minister Uzi Landau ("A map to national disaster," Haaretz, April 8) contained a rare disclosure: The minister responsible for Israel's secret services, and until recently the public security minister, confessed that in order to avoid an international conference and the deployment in Israel of foreign observers, the Sharon government had adopted a policy the price of which was hundreds of dead, thousands of wounded and a rapid slide into a severe and unprecedented economic slump. Now, it turns out, it wasn't worth it, because the "road map" brings with it the same internationalization that Sharon was trying to avoid. Finally, an honest man in the upper echelons of the Sharon government admits that the heavy price we are paying is a consequence of the government's refusal to return to the negotiating table for fear of global intervention. Now the public must decide whether this price is a reasonable one, and whether the fear of an international summit is justified. Six years - 1985-1991 - were frittered away deliberating over an international conference, until Yitzhak Shamir himself went to Madrid. On account of Shamir, Israel missed an opportunity for a Jordanian-Palestinian solution, following his rejection of the London accord in 1987. Netanyahu decided to halt the Oslo process in 1996, and nailed the coffin shut in 1999. In 2001, Sharon called off talks with the Palestinians "as long as terror continues," knowing full well that for terror there was no better prize.

Flames engulf the symbols of power
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, April 12, 2003
Baghdad is burning. You could count 16 columns of smoke rising over the city yesterday afternoon. At the beginning, there was the Ministry of Trade. I watched the looters throw petrol through the smashed windows of the ground floor and the fire burst from them within two seconds. Then there was a clutch of offices at the bottom of the Jumhuriyah Bridge, which emitted clouds of black, sulphurous smoke. By mid- afternoon, I was standing outside the Central Bank of Iraq as each window flamed like a candle, a mile-long curtain of ash and burning papers drifting over the Tigris. As the pickings got smaller, the looters grew tired and – the history of Baghdad insists that anarchy takes this form – the symbols of government power were cremated. The Americans talked of a "new posture" but did nothing. They pushed armoured patrols through the east of the city, Abrams tanks and Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles, but their soldiers did no more than wave at the arsonists. I found a woman weeping beside her husband in the old Arab market. "We are destroying what we now have for ourselves," she said to him. "We are destroying our own future."