The Bush Doctrine Is Israel's Doctrine
By Ghali Hassan
06 October, 2004
Countercurrents.org
It
is not coincident to have American tanks and Armour of terror rolling
into Iraqi towns killing innocent Iraqi civilians en masse and destroying
their homes and communities at the same time Israeli tanks rolled into
Palestinian refugee camps and towns killing Palestinian civilians en
masse and destroying their homes and communities. Iraq and Palestine
are two centres of identical atrocities committed by two close allies
against defenceless populations. These atrocities are only allowed to
continue because of the silence and passivity of Western citizens, and
media pundits.
The implementation
of the Bush doctrine U.S. National Security Strategy in
Iraq is greeted with fanfares in Israel, and particularly among the
fascist element of the Israeli elites. No other country has benefited
from the destruction and occupation of Iraq more than Israel. Israel
was able to built its illegal Apartheid Wall and confiscate
more Palestinian land. Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian school
children point blank. Iraq provided the right diversion for Israel to
perpetuate its crimes against the Palestinians. Israels atrocities
against the Palestinians have increased by many folds in the last two
years.
The new
Bush doctrine, repudiates the core idea of the United Nations
Charter, which prohibits the use of international force that is not
undertaken in self-defence after the occurrence of an armed attack across
an international boundary or pursuant to decision by the UN Security
Council, writes Richard Falk, Professor of International Law and
Practise at Princeton University.
There is nothing
new about the Bush doctrine. On the contrary, this doctrine has been
around for a long time. On June 07, 1981, the world was outraged by
Israels blatant aggression against Iraqs nuclear reactor
at Osirak. The Los Angeles Times called it, state-sponsored terrorism.
The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning Israel
aggression. The international community, including the US, rejected
Israels claim of self-defence.
In March 1986, US
president Roland Reagan ordered an air attack on Libya killing scores
of innocent civilians, including the daughter of president Muammar el-Qadaffi.
The pretext for Reagan pre-emptive strike was Libyas
association with terrorism. In 1998, Bill Clinton ordered a cruise
missiles attack on Sudans al-Shifa Pharmaceutical plant destroying
the source of vital medicine, and as a result killed many thousands
of innocent people. Both attacks have been condemned by the majority
of nations as acts of aggression contrary to Article 51 of the UN Charter.
After the 9/11 attacks
on the US, the Bush administration saw an opportunity to
justify attacking other nations pre-emptively. Hence, the
tragedy of 9/11 has legitimised the doctrine of pre-emptive strike.
Afghanistan and Iraq were the immediate victims of this doctrine. As
usual, the pretexts were self-defence.
In the case of Iraq,
all pretexts proved to be fabricated lies, and we are now told that
the invasion and occupation of Iraq is justified because the US is bringing-democracy
to Iraq and the Middle East by way of mass killings of Iraqi civilians
on daily basis. Today, most Iraqis believe that Saddam was not that
bad compared with the new democracy brought by the US. The
US is more interested in building more bases, controlling regions and
resources than caring about moral principle and solving
humanitarian crises.
The US main goal
in Iraq is to find a Vichy-style regime, keeps Iraq dependent and has
access to bases. The US is interested in domination, not democracy.
If the US is interested in free democracy, the best place for the US
to start is at home in the US. The people of Iraq are doomed if they
do not resist this new tyranny.
After the UN have
been sidelined and international laws and norms have been ignored, the
doctrine have been modified to allow the freedom of aggression against
nations that have the intent and ability to develop weapon
of mass destruction. In other words, high schools and universities with
teaching laboratories are sufficient pretexts for pre-emptive strike.
It should be borne in mind that this doctrine is only applies to the
US and Israel. For example, Iran, which is threaten by both the US and
Israel, does not have a right of self-defence.
One day after the
9/11 attacks, the Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was commenting
on the significance of the 9/11 atrocity on Israel and US relations.
It is very good, he said. Well, not very good but
it will generate immediate sympathy, and it would strengthen
the bond between our two people, because we have experienced terror
over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive
haemorrhaging of terror.
Two years after
the 9/11 attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon couldnt
be much happier. President George Bush called him a man of peace,
and President Bush is adopting Israels own doctrine, the Bush-Israel
doctrine to strengthen the bond between Israel and the US.
Unfortunately, no
one seems to have the courage to remind the world of Ariel Sharon, as
the oldest terrorist on the scene today. Mr Sharon impeccable career
goes back to 1953. The Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, recalls Sharon's
leading of a massacre in the village of Kibya in 1953. The soldiers
of Major Ariel Sharon killed 70 Palestinians in the reprisal raid, most
of them women and children. Since then, Sharon never looked back.
He continued his career of mass murdering Palestinian men, women and
children in the refugee camps.
In 1981 invasion
of Lebanon, Mr Sharon organised cold-blooded massacre of 2000 Palestinian
men, women and children at the Sabre and Chatila camps in Beirut. At
least 17,000 civilians were killed in the Israeli invasion and tens
of thousands of homes destroyed. Even the Israeli Kahan Commission found
Sharon quote personally responsible for the massacre.
During the course
of the second intifada, the total number of Palestinians killed between
September 29, 2000 and May 31, 2004 is 3,023, mostly women and children.
In December 2, 2000, Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, wrote: I am sure
we can all agree that Israel has indeed perpetrated the international
crime of genocide against the Palestinian People.
The number of Iraqi
civilians killed by US Occupation forces is much higher. It is estimated
that between 37,000-55,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result
of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The massacres of innocent
civilians continue today in Iraq and Palestine.
The reasons for
invading Iraq remain hidden from the public: protecting Israel and secure
vital energy resources in the Middle East. The US deputy defence secretary,
Paul Wolfowitz, told Vanity Fair Magazine in early 2004: For bureaucratic
reasons we settled on WMD [to invade Iraq] because it was the one reason
everyone could agree on. He went further to tell journalists that,
economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims
on a sea of oil. The reason Mr Wolfowitz was saying was a convenient
lie a lie that has been sold to the citizens of the world. Mr
Wolfowitz, who is also know as Israel-centric for his loyalty
to Israels violence against the Palestinians, was one of the architects
of the invasion of Iraq.
The US is currently
playing the role of the proxy soldier for Israel. Philip
Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate
the 9/11 attacks, told a crowd at the University of Virginia on September
2002: Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against
us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has
been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel, he continued,
and this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the
Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly.
And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically,
because it is not a popular sell [to Americans], said Mr Zelikow.
Former Wall Street
Journal editor Max Boot claims that the Bush doctrine sounds as
if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine
[the mouthpiece of the American Jewish Committee], the neocon bible.
Of course any one mentioning Israel will be blackmailed by being anti-Semitism,
which is designed to nullify public discourse by smearing and intimidating
foes and censoring and blacklisting them, and any who would publish
them. Norman Podhoretz, editor emeritus of Commentary, has for decades
branded critics of Israel as anti-Semites. Arabs and Israelis are Semites.
Harvard professor
Stanley Hoffman writes of the neocons, there is a loose collection
of friends of Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between
the Jewish state and the United States.
These analysts look on
foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: Is it good
or bad for Israel? Since that nations founding in 1948, these
thinkers have never been in very good odour at the State Department,
but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon, around such strategists
as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.
Robert Kaiser of
the Washington Post quotes a senior U.S. official as saying; The
Likudniks are really in charge now. Kaiser names Perle, Wolfowitz,
and Feith as members of a pro-Israel network inside the administration
and adds David Wurmser of the Defence Department and Elliott Abrams,
(the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz) of the National Security Council.
Sharon repeatedly claims a special closeness to the Bushites,
Kaiser writes. For the first time a U.S. administration and a
Likud government are pursuing nearly identical policies, he noted.
Kathleen and Bill
Christison, former CIA analysts for may years, wrote recently, the
suggestion that the war with Iraq is being planned at Israel's behest,
or at the instigation of policymakers whose main motivation is trying
to create a secure environment for Israel, is strong They noted
that, many Israeli analysts believe this. They cited Israeli
commentator Akiva Eldar in a Ha'aretz column that [Richard] Perle,
[Douglas] Feith, and their fellow strategists are walking a fine
line between their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests.
Furthermore, peace
activist Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom, who wrote a biography of Ariel Sharon
and knows him well, has written many times that Sharon has long
planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East and that
the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon.
The Israeli project is an imperialist project extending from the Caucasus
to the Indian Ocean. Iraq is the platform for this imperialist
thrust eastwards. Israel penetration into Iraq on the back of
US tanks is a case in point. Seymour Hersh recently reported in the
New Yorker that, Israel is using Kurdish militias in northern Iraq to
destabilise Iran.
It is a worrying
concern that mainstream media pundits and Western liberals remain silence
on this dangerous and violence ideology of few reactionary, self-serving
individuals who hijacking the sorrows of the American people in order
to serve the interests of Israel.
The Bush doctrine
is an approach fraught with peril and likely to fail. It is not
politically unsustainable but diplomatically harmful, wrote Professor
John Ikenberry of George Washington University. And if history
is a guide, it will trigger antagonism and resistance that will leave
America in more hostile and divided world.
The Bush doctrine,
like the Israel doctrine, is doomed to fail. Those who support the US
Occupation of Iraq are only opportunists, criminals and thugs. No one
welcomes occupation and terror with roses and kisses, let alone US-Israel
occupations of Arab lands. Anti-imperialist resentment in Iraq is deeply
embedded in the Iraqi national psyche, and no American violence will
shake it.
The only peaceful
solution for the current tragedy and violence is for American allies
and civilised citizens to reject the Bush-Israel doctrine and convince
the US and Israel to end their occupations of Iraq and Palestine and
live like civilised nations.
Ghali Hassan lives
in Perth Western Australia: He can be reached at e-mail: [email protected]