"Stability"
Noam Chomsky
Excerpted from Fateful Triangle, 1999

For some time, I've been compelled to arrange speaking engagements long in advance. Sometimes a title is requested for a talk scheduled several years ahead. There is, I've found, one title that always works: "The current crisis in the Middle East." One can't predict exactly what the crisis will be far down the road, but that there will be one is a fairly safe prediction.
That will continue to be the case as long as basic problems of the region are not addressed.
Furthermore, the crises will be serious in what President Eisenhower called "the most strategically important area in the world." In the early post-War years, the United States in effect extended the Monroe Doctrine to the Middle East, barring any interference apart from Britain, assumed to be a loyal dependency and quickly punished when it occasionally got out of hand (as in 1956). The strategic importance of the region lies primarily in its immense petroleum reserves and the global power accorded by control over them; and, crucially, from the huge profits that flow to the Anglo-American rulers, which have been of critical importance for their economies. It has been necessary to ensure that this enormous wealth flows primarily to the West, not to the people of the region. That is one fundamental problem that will continue to cause unrest and disorder. Another is the Israel-Arab conflict with its many ramifications, which have been closely related to the major U.S. strategic goal of dominating the region's resources and wealth.
For many years, it was claimed the core problem was Soviet subversion and expansionism, the reflexive justification for virtually all policies since the Bolshevik takeover in Russia in 1917. That pretext having vanished, it is now quietly conceded by the White House (March 1990) that in past years, the "threats to our interests" in the Middle East "could not be laid at the Kremlin's door"; the doctrinal system has yet to adjust fully to the new requirements. "In the future, we expect that non-Soviet threats to [our] interests will command even greater attention," the White House continued in its annual plea to Congress for a huge military budget. In reality, the "threats to our interests," in the Middle East as elsewhere, had always been indigenous nationalism, a fact stressed in internal documents and sometimes publicly.
A "worst case" prediction for the crisis a few years ahead would be a war between the U.S. and Iran; unlikely, but not impossible.
Israel is pressing very hard for such a confrontation, recognizing Iran to be the most serious military threat that it faces. So far, the U.S. is playing a somewhat different game in its relations to Iran; accordingly, a potential war, and the necessity for it, is not a major topic in the media and journals of opinion here.
The U.S. is, of course, concerned over Iranian power. That is one reason why the U.S. turned to active support for Iraq in the late stages of the Iraq-Iran war, with a decisive effect on the outcome, and why Washington continued its active courtship of Saddam Hussein until he interfered with U.S. plans for the region in August 1990. U.S. concerns over Iranian power were also reflected in the decision to support Saddam's murderous assault against the Shiite population of southern Iraq in March 1991, immediately after the fighting stopped. A narrow reason was fear that Iran, a Shiite state, might exert influence over Iraqi Shiites. A more general reason was the threat to "stability" that a successful popular revolution might pose: to translate into English, the threat that it might inspire democratizing tendencies that would undermine the array of dictatorships that the U.S. relies on to control the people of the region.
Recall that Washington's support for its former friend was more than tacit; the U.S. military command even denied rebelling Iraqi officers access to captured Iraqi equipment as the slaughter of the Shiite population proceeded under Stormin' Norman's steely gaze.
Similar concerns arose as Saddam turned to crushing the Kurdish rebellion in the North. In Israel, commentators from the Chief of Staff to political analysts and Knesset members, across a very broad political spectrum, openly advocated support for Saddam's atrocities, on the grounds that an independent Kurdistan might create a Syria-Kurd-Iran territorial link that would be a serious threat to Israel. When U.S. records are released in the distant future, we might discover that the White House harbored similar thoughts, which delayed even token gestures to block the crushing of Kurdish resistance until Washington was compelled to act by a public that had been aroused by media coverage of the suffering of the Kurds, recognizably Aryan and portrayed quite differently from the southern Shiites, who suffered a far worse fate but were only dirty Arabs.
In passing, we may note that the character of U.S.-U.K. concern for the Kurds is readily determined not only by the timing of the support, and the earlier cynical treatment of Iraqi Kurds, but also by the reaction to Turkey's massive atrocities against its Kurdish population right through the Gulf crisis. These were scarcely reported here in the mainstream, in virtue of the need to support the President, who had lauded his Turkish colleague as "a protector of peace" joining those who "stand up for civilized values around the world" against Saddam Hussein. But Europe was less disciplined. We therefore read, in the London Financial Times, that "Turkey's western allies were rarely comfortable explaining to their public why they condoned Ankara's heavy-handed repression of its own Kurdish minority while the west offered support to the Kurds in Iraq," not a serious PR problem here. "Diplomats now say that, more than any other issue, the sight of Kurds fighting Kurds [in Fall 1992] has served to change the way that western public opinion views the Kurdish cause." In short, we can breathe a sigh of relief: cynicism triumphs, and the Western powers can continue to condone the harsh repression of Kurds by the "protector of peace," while shedding crocodile tears over their treatment by the (current) enemy.
Israel's reasons for trying to stir up a U.S. confrontation with Iran, and "Islamic fundamentalism" generally, are easy to understand. The Israeli military recognizes that, apart from resort to nuclear weapons, there is little it can do to confront Iranian power, and is concerned that after the (anticipated) collapse of the U.S.-run "peace process," a Syria-Iran axis may be a significant threat. The U.S., in contrast, appears to be seeking a long-term accommodation with "moderate" (that is, pro-U.S.) elements in Iran and a return to something like the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah.
How these tendencies may evolve is unclear.
The propaganda campaign about "Islamic fundamentalism" has its farcical elements — even putting aside the fact that U.S. culture compares with Iran in its religious fundamentalism. The most extreme Islamic fundamentalist state in the world is the loyal U.S. ally Saudi Arabia—or, to be more precise, the family dictatorship that serves as the "Arab facade" behind which the U.S. effectively controls the Arabian peninsula, to borrow the terms of British colonial rule. The West has no problems with Islamic fundamentalism there. Probably one of the most fanatic Islamic fundamentalist groups in the world in recent years was led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist extremist who had been a CIA favorite and prime recipient of the $3.3 billion in (official) U.S. aid given to the Afghan rebels (with roughly the same amount reported from Saudi Arabia), the man who shelled Kabul with thousands killed, driving hundreds of thousands of people out of the city (including all Western embassies), in an effort to shoot his way into power; not quite the same as Pol Pot emptying Phnom Penh, since the U.S. client was far more bloody in that particular operation.
Similarly, it is not at all concealed in Israel that its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was undertaken in part to destroy the secular nationalism of the PLO, becoming a real nuisance with its persistent call for a peaceful diplomatic settlement, which was undermining the U.S.-Israeli strategy of gradual integration of the occupied territories within Israel. One result was the creation of Hizbollah, an Iranian-backed fundamentalist group that drove Israel out of most of Lebanon. For similar reasons, Israel supported fundamentalist elements as a rival to the accommodationist PLO in the occupied territories. The results are similar to Lebanon, as Hamas attacks against the Israeli military become increasingly difficult to contain. The examples illustrate the typical brilliance of intelligence operations when they have to deal with populations, not simply various gangsters.
The basic reasoning goes back to the early days of Zionism: Palestinian moderates pose the most dangerous threat to the goal of avoiding any political settlement until facts are established to which it will have to conform.
In brief, Islamic fundamentalism is an enemy only when it is "out of control." In that case, it falls into the category of "radical nationalism" or "ultranationalism," more generally, of independence whether religious or secular, right or left, military or civilian; priests who preach the "preferential option for the poor" in Central America, to mention a recent case.
The historically unique U.S.-Israel alliance has been based on the perception that Israel is a "strategic asset," fulfilling U.S. goals in the region in tacit alliance with the Arab facade in the Gulf and other regional protectors of the family dictatorships, and performing services elsewhere. Those who see Israel's future as an efficient Sparta, at permanent war with its enemies and surviving at the whim of the U.S., naturally want that relationship to continue — including, it seems, much of the organized American Jewish community, a fact that has long outraged Israeli doves. The doctrine is explained by General (ret.) Shlomo Gazit, former head of Israeli military intelligence and a senior official of the military administration of the occupied territories. After the collapse of the USSR, he writes,"Israel's main task has not changed at all, and it remains of crucial importance. Its location at the center of the Arab Muslim Middle East predestines Israel to be a devoted guardian of stability in all the countries surrounding it. Its [role] is to protect the existing regimes: to prevent or halt the processes of radicalization and to block the expansion of fundamentalist religious zealotry." To which we may add: performing dirty work that the U.S. is unable to undertake itself because of popular opposition or other costs. The conception has its grim logic. What is remarkable is that advocacy of it should be identified as "support for Israel."
With some translation, Gazit's analysis seems plausible. We have to understand "stability" to mean maintenance of specific forms of domination and control, and easy access to resources and profits. And the phrase "fundamentalist religious zealotry," as noted, is a code word for a particular form of "radical nationalism" that threatens "stability."

UN Human Rights Commissioner warns of war crimes in Lebanon
By Chris Marsden
22 July 2006
WSWS.ORG

The statement by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour that war crimes may have been committed in the Lebanon conflict was deliberately couched in diplomatic terms.

Arbour took pains to identify both Israel and Hezbollah as potentially guilty parties. Nevertheless, there was little doubt that her target was Tel Aviv, and her warning that liability for war crimes is not restricted to the military, but extends to politicians who approve their operations was also meant to be heard by Israel’s political backers in Washington and London.

Her reference to the “scale of killings in the region,” and “the supreme obligations to protect civilians” under international law could only be directed at Israel, given the massive and disproportionate violence it has meted out.

No one would suggest that the UN has any intention of considering prosecution against any senior or military figure in Israel, let alone from the United States or Britain.

There has been speculation as to whether or not Israel can be brought to trial because it does not recognise bodies such as the International Criminal Court and is not a signatory to Treaty of Rome. It hardly needs adding that Washington demonstrates a similar disdain for such international institutions.

But the fact remains that millions throughout the world believe that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should face war crimes charges. And Arbour is fully aware of the outrage and disgust that has been aroused internationally by the appalling destruction heaped upon the Lebanese people by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) with the unconditional backing of the US and Britain.

Arbour is in fact acting as friendly counsel, advising the Israeli, US and British governments that they are setting in motion forces that are not under their control.

Without at least making such a warning, the stench of hypocrisy that pervades international politics—when only those who fall foul of Washington such as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein face human rights charges—would be overwhelming.

Israel’s actions in the Lebanon are in clear contravention of the 1949 Geneva Convention. Article 51 of the First Protocol states, “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack.” Article 52 states, “Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives....”

As Arbour explained, “Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians.

“Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable.”

Israel has no defence against such charges. Its claim to be targeting Hezbollah and a supposed infrastructure of terrorism is obscene, given the scale of its actions against the entire Lebanese people.

Lebanon has been subjected to a total sea and air blockade, leaving its population of 3.5 million unable to seek any refuge from a daily bombardment by aircraft, tanks and gunboats.

Well over 300 people have been killed and thousands injured—many of them children.

Israel’s offensive began with the systematic destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure, including its only international airport, power plants, water treatment facilities, roads and bridges. But it was not long before it began shelling the predominantly Shia neighbourhoods in Beirut, claiming that every house was potentially sheltering Hezbollah fighters. This is Tel Aviv’s pathetic attempt to justify attacks on civilian targets with claims that they have a “dual use.”

Amidst the occasional strike on actual Hezbollah facilities, thousands of homes have been destroyed in one of the most densely populated areas of Lebanon. Reporters allowed to visit the area speak of it having been “laid waste” and “pummeled.”

One report described how “Eight-or nine-storey buildings had their facades blown out by blasts; others lean forward as if about to fall. Sofas, mattresses, toys, books and every personal possession imaginable litter the streets among chunks of concrete, twisted metal and blown-out window frames. Electrical cables dangle everywhere. Walking through it all is treacherous.”

On Thursday evening, the Israeli Air Force dropped 23 tons of explosives on the Bourj al-Barajneh suburb, with two dozen jets using special burrowing bombs. The explanation offered by Israel was that it was seeking to kill Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. This is merely seeking to justify one war crime with another. Like the US, Israel has an official policy of assassinating its political opponents. But this is illegal under international law.

The claim that Israel is targeting Hezbollah has been used to sanction attacks on civilians throughout southern Lebanon—an offensive that amounts to ethnic cleansing. It is a staggering fact that official estimates are of 500,000 internally displaced people in the country, fully a seventh of the entire population.

Israel has now dropped leaflets throughout the area warning residents to leave their homes as it is going to attack. There are widespread predictions that a ground invasion is imminent. Once again, the leaflets are meant as proof that it is seeking to minimise civilian casualties. In reality, all they achieve is to spread fear and alarm. Just where is anyone supposed to go when all borders have been sealed and many roads have been destroyed? Where is a safe haven when the entire country is under attack?

There are, moreover, numerous reports of deliberate attacks on those fleeing areas targeted by the IDF. On July 15, a convoy of civilians was bombed as it tried to escape the southern Lebanese village of Marwahin, killing some 20 people. The IDF had warned local residents to evacuate and then bombed the only direct route out of the area. Photographs showed bodies incinerated and mutilated by the blasts.

In another incident, when Jamhour electricity station was targeted by Israeli jets, rescue workers rushing to the scene to help the injured were bombed.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Friday that the IDF were also targeting ambulances and medical convoys. Israel’s onslaught was “no longer against Hezbollah, it is an attack against the Lebanese and Lebanon,” he said. It could not be otherwise. Israeli and US propaganda routinely depicts Hezbollah as a tightly knit terrorist outfit that is nothing more than a front organisation for Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon.

Washington in particular makes cynical claim to be concerned with preserving the democratic government of Lebanon against those who seek its destruction. Hezbollah is, in fact, part of that government. It is Lebanon’s largest single political party with mass support amongst the Shia population that predominates in the south. It has two government ministers, and 23 MPs who are part of a 35-strong opposition grouping. As well as its parliamentary presence, Hezbollah runs a range of social services, including hospitals and schools, on which hundreds of thousands rely.

The forces that are actually seeking to topple a democratically elected government are not to be found in Damascus and Tehran, but in Washington, Tel Aviv and London. These are the real architects of an illegal war of aggression to bring about regime change.

The Bush administration has given Israel carte blanche to perpetrate war crimes, even when the lives of its own citizens are threatened. This is the clear implication of the remarks by US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, when asked to comment on the deaths of eight Canadian citizens in an Israeli air strike July 16.

Bolton insisted that there was no “moral equivalence” between those killed in Lebanon and in Israel. The deaths of Israelis were the result of “malicious terrorist acts.” The deaths of civilians in Lebanon “were sad and highly unfortunate consequences of [Israeli] self-defence,” he said.

Keeping Iraq's Oil In the Ground
By Greg Palast, AlterNet
alternet.org
June 14, 2006.

World oil production today stands at more than twice the 15-billion a-year maximum projected by Shell Oil in 1956 -- and reserves are climbing at a faster clip yet. That leaves the question, Why this war?

Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world's petroleum reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years -- and it is in Shell's and the rest of the industry's interest that this doubling doesn't happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq's oil production. Big Oil's interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?

It wouldn't be the first time. If oil is what we're looking for, there are, indeed, extra helpings in Iraq. On paper, Iraq, at 112 billion proven barrels, has the second largest reserves in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. That does not make Saudi Arabia happy. Even more important is that Iraq has fewer than three thousand operating wells... compared to one million in Texas.

That makes the Saudis even unhappier. It would take a decade or more, but start drilling in Iraq and its reserves will about double, bringing it within gallons of Saudi Arabia's own gargantuan pool. Should Iraq drill on that scale, the total, when combined with the Saudis', will drown the oil market. That wouldn't make the Texans too happy either. So Fadhil Chalabi's plan for Iraq to pump 12 million barrels a day, a million more than Saudi Arabia, is not, to use Bob Ebel's (Center fro Strategic and International Studies) terminology, "ridiculous" from a raw resource view, it is ridiculous politically. It would never be permitted. An international industry policy of suppressing Iraqi oil production has been in place since 1927. We need again to visit that imp called "history."

It began with a character known as "Mr. 5%"-- Calouste Gulbenkian -- who, in 1925, slicked King Faisal, neophyte ruler of the country recently created by Churchill, into giving Gulbenkian's "Iraq Petroleum Company" (IPC) exclusive rights to all of Iraq's oil. Gulbenkian flipped 95% of his concession to a combine of western oil giants: Anglo-Persian, Royal Dutch Shell, CFP of France, and the Standard Oil trust companies (now ExxonMobil and its "sisters.") The remaining slice Calouste kept for himself -- hence, "Mr. 5%."

The oil majors had a better use for Iraq's oil than drilling it -- not drilling it. The oil bigs had bought Iraq's concession to seal it up and keep it off the market. To please his buyers' wishes, Mr. 5% spread out a big map of the Middle East on the floor of a hotel room in Belgium and drew a thick red line around the gulf oil fields, centered on Iraq. All the oil company executives, gathered in the hotel room, signed their name on the red line -- vowing not to drill, except as a group, within the red-lined zone. No one, therefore, had an incentive to cheat and take red-lined oil. All of Iraq's oil, sequestered by all, was locked in, and all signers would enjoy a lift in worldwide prices. Anglo-Persian Company, now British Petroleum (BP), would pump almost all its oil, reasonably, from Persia (Iran). Later, the Standard Oil combine, renamed the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco), would limit almost all its drilling to Saudi Arabia. Anglo-Persian (BP) had begun pulling oil from Kirkuk, Iraq, in 1927 and, in accordance with the Red-Line Agreement, shared its Kirkuk and Basra fields with its IPC group -- and drilled no more.

The following was written three decades ago:


Although its original concession of March 14, 1925, cove- red all of Iraq, the Iraq Petroleum Co., under the owner- ship of BP (23.75%), Shell (23.75%), CFP [of France] (23.75%), Exxon (11.85%), Mobil (11.85%), and [Calouste] Gulbenkian (5.0%), limited its production to fields constituting only one-half of 1 percent of the country's total area. During the Great Depression, the world was awash with oil and greater output from Iraq would simply have driven the price down to even lower levels.

Plus ca change...

When the British Foreign Office fretted that locking up oil would stoke local nationalist anger, BP-IPC agreed privately to pretend to drill lots of wells, but make them absurdly shallow and place them where, wrote a company manager, "there was no danger of striking oil." This systematic suppression of Iraq's production, begun in 1927, has never ceased. In the early 1960s, Iraq's frustration with the British-led oil consortium's failure to pump pushed the nation to cancel the BP-Shell-Exxon concession and seize the oil fields. Britain was ready to strangle Baghdad, but a cooler, wiser man in the White House, John F. Kennedy, told the Brits to back off. President Kennedy refused to call Iraq's seizure an "expropriation" akin to Castro's seizure of U.S.-owned banana plantations. Kennedy's view was that Anglo-American companies had it coming to them because they had refused to honor their legal commitment to drill.

But the freedom Kennedy offered the Iraqis to drill their own oil to the maximum was swiftly taken away from them by their Arab brethren.

The OPEC cartel, controlled by Saudi Arabia, capped Iraq's production at a sum equal to Iran's, though the Iranian reserves are far smaller than Iraq's. The excuse for this quota equality between Iraq and Iran was to prevent war between them. It didn't. To keep Iraq's Ba'athists from complaining about the limits, Saudi Arabia simply bought off the leaders by funding Saddam's war against Iran and giving the dictator $7 billion for his "Islamic bomb" program.

In 1974, a U.S. politician broke the omerta over the suppression of Iraq's oil production. It was during the Arab oil embargo that Senator Edmund Muskie revealed a secret intelligence report of "fantastic" reserves of oil in Iraq undeveloped because U.S. oil companies refused to add pipeline capacity. Muskie, who'd just lost a bid for the Presidency, was dubbed a "loser" and ignored. The Iranian bombing of the Basra fields (1980-88) put a new kink in Iraq's oil production. Iraq's frustration under production limits explodes periodically.

In August 1990, Kuwait's craven siphoning of borderland oil fields jointly owned with Iraq gave Saddam the excuse to take Kuwait's share. Here was Saddam's opportunity to increase Iraq's OPEC quota by taking Kuwait's (most assuredly not approved by the U.S.). Saddam's plan backfired. The Basra oil fields not crippled by Iran were demolished in 1991 by American B-52s. Saddam's petro-military overreach into Kuwait gave the West the authority for a more direct oil suppression method called the "Sanctions" program, later changed to "Oil for Food." Now we get to the real reason for the U.N. embargo on Iraqi oil exports. According to the official U.S. position:

Sanctions were critical to preventing Iraq from acquiring equipment that could be used to reconstitute banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.

How odd. If cutting Saddam's allowance was the purpose, then sanctions, limiting oil exports, was a very suspect method indeed. The nature of the oil market (a cartel) is such that the elimination of two million barrels a day increased Saddam's revenue. One might conclude that sanctions were less about WMD and more about EPS (earnings per share) of oil sellers.

In other words, there is nothing new under the desert sun. Today's fight over how much of Iraq's oil to produce (or suppress) simply extends into this century the last century's pump-or-control battles. In sum, Big Oil, whether in European or Arab-OPEC dress, has done its damned best to keep Iraq's oil buried deep in the ground to keep prices high in the air. Iraq has 74 known fields and only 15 in production; 526 known "structures" (oil-speak for "pools of oil"), only 125 drilled.

And they won't be drilled, not unless Iraq says, "Mother, may I?" to Saudi Arabia, or, as the James Baker/Council on Foreign Relations paper says, "Saudi Arabia may punish Iraq." And believe me, Iraq wouldn't want that. The decision to expand production has, for now, been kept out of Iraqi's hands by the latest method of suppressing Iraq's oil flow -- the 2003 invasion and resistance to invasion. And it has been darn effective. Iraq's output in 2003, 2004 and 2005 was less than produced under the restrictive Oil-for-Food Program. Whether by design or happenstance, this decline in output has resulted in tripling the profits of the five U.S. oil majors to $89 billion for a single year, 2005, compared to pre-invasion 2002. That suggests an interesting arithmetic equation. Big Oil's profits are up $89 billion a year in the same period the oil industry boosted contributions to Mr. Bush's reelection campaign to roughly $40 million.

That would make our president "Mr. 0.05%."

A History of Oil in Iraq

Suppressing It, Not Pumping It

1925-28 "Mr. 5%" sells his monopoly on Iraq's oil to British Petroleum and Exxon, who sign a "Red-Line Agreement" vowing not to compete by drilling independently in Iraq.


1948 Red-Line Agreement ended, replaced by oil combines' "dog in the manger" strategy -- taking control of fields, then capping production--drilling shallow holes where "there was no danger of striking oil."


1961 OPEC, founded the year before, places quotas on Iraq's exports equal to Iran's, locking in suppression policy.


1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Iran destroys Basra fields. Iraq cannot meet OPEC quota. 1991 Desert Storm. Anglo-American bombings cut production.


1991-2003 United Nations Oil embargo (zero legal exports) followed by Oil-for-Food Program limiting Iraqi sales to 2 million barrels a day.


2003-? "Insurgents" sabotage Iraq's pipelines and infrastructure.


2004 Options for Iraqi OilThe secret plan adopted by U.S. State Department overturns Pentagon proposal to massively in crease oil production. State Department plan, adopted by government of occupied Iraq, limits state oil company to OPEC quotas.

This article is excerpted from Greg Palast's new book, "Armed Madhouse" (Dutton Adult, 2006).

What they were eager to do was put the strategically most significant and contested regions of the planet "in play," using the destabilization card, always assuming in every destabilization situation that the chips would fall on their side of the gaming table, and that, if worse came to worse, even chaos would turn out to be to their benefit.

After retiring from the Air Force as a colonel, Boyd turned down many offers from industry in order to serve as an unpaid Pentagon consultant, continuing his revolutionary work as a civilian. His focus shifted from aircraft design to the wider issue of analyzing the reasons for success in conflict. This led to Boyd's seminal work, "Patterns of Conflict," an unpublished, two-day briefing that he gave for almost two decades throughout the military. This lecture first revealed Boyd's breakthrough, the "OODA Loop" (for Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action) a theory of how military commanders can win by getting inside the mind and outpace the decision cycle of the enemy commander.

Boyd's breakthrough theory would play a pivotal, but hidden role in the shaping of the U.S. victory in Operation Desert Storm, Coram writes. Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney consulted extensively with Boyd and credits the retired fighter pilot with helping him resist an initial Army plan that would have employed the coalition ground forces in a pitched battle with the Iraqi army.
http://sftt.org/dwa/2003/1/1/2.html

The Boyd Cycle, otherwise known as the O-O-D-A loop, is a decision making cycle developed by Col. John Boyd U.S.A.F. He developed the cycle over the skies of Korea in the mid 1950’s, while flying combat missions. He determined that conflict was timed, competitive Observation, Orientation, Decision and Action Cycles. The essence for Boyd was human perception, not weapons or circumstances.
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/leland_ooda_police.htm

To spread chaos among the enemy and to stem the chaotic effects upon one's own. Boyd's warfare is a moral one. By moral, I mean the psychological ability for an enemy to apply intellectual effort to the complicated tasks of war. The first goal of an aggressor, and in Boyd's philosophy the advantage always lies with the aggressor, is to confuse and blind an opponent. In Boyd's OODA loop, the single largest component is that of observation. Cut that and the enemy is virtually defeated…. The most amazing aspect of the OODA Loop is that the losing side rarely understands what happened.”

The US military has long attempted to use Boyd's discoveries to reconfigure the military. But neither the institution of the military nor the US state can really adopt Boyd's principles of tactical agility. Boyd worked his principles out in aerial combat, and they are principles for conscious actors. The military is too bureaucratic, foreign occupiers have difficulty "orienting" accurately, and the political goals of the US state create and amplify their own resistance.

And the ruling class is stuck in its own thought process. They reduce everything to a technical problem to "solve." That's how Rumsfeld's so-called Revolution in Military Affairs came about. They take a concept like tactical agility, and they try to apply it with a digital thought process.But strategic conflict is not ultimately resolvable through technology. Technologies change the framework, but strategic conflict is a contest of consciousness, and war is political, again subject to human agency. That's why I haven't been able to share the anxiety of many allies about US military invincibility, or even about the attempt to create a panopticon society here. We're better off focusing on understanding their vulnerabilities, so we can fight them. We have to consciously reject internalizing their gaze, as Foucault might say.

In fact, Boyd's principles contained a strong dose of chaos theory. Every action creates a cascade of consequences that are unpredictable and often momentous... the butterfly effect. That's precisely why tactical agility is achieved with minimal long-term planning and the refinement of the intuition in order to go through the OODA cycle faster than your opponent. This makes an ally of that so-called chaos, instead of an enemy. Look at Iraq right now, and tell me who is reacting to whom.
Counterpunch

The Destabilization Game
by Tom Engelhardt
Commondreams.org

One of these days, some scholar will do a little history of the odd moments when microphones or recording systems were turned on or left on, whether on purpose or not, and so gave us a bit of history in the raw. We have plenty of American examples of this phenomenon, ranging from the secret White House recordings of President John F. Kennedy's meetings with his advisers during the Cuban Missile Crisis (so voluminous as to become multi-volume publications) and Richard Nixon's secret tapes (minus those infamous 18½ minutes), voluminous enough so that you could spend the next 84 days nonstop listening to what's been made publicly available, to the moment in 1984 when a campaigning President Ronald_Reagan quipped on the radio during a microphone check (supposedly unaware that it was on): "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

Just last week, a lovely little example of this sort of thing came our way and, twenty-two years after Ronald Reagan threatened to atomize the "evil empire," Russia was still the subject. Last Thursday, at a private lunch of G-8 foreign ministers in Moscow, an audio link to the media was left on, allowing reporters to listen in on a running series of arguments (or as the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler put it, "several long and testy exchanges") between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over a collective document no one would remember thenceforth

The whole event was a grim, if minor, comedy of the absurd. According to the Post account, "Reporters traveling with Rice transcribed the tape of the private luncheon but did not tell Rice aides about it until after a senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity as usual, assured them that ‘there was absolutely no friction whatsoever' between the two senior diplomats." (What better reminder do we need that so much anonymous sourcing granted by newspapers turns out to be a mix of unreliable spin and outright lies readers would be better off without?) In, as Kessler wrote, "a time of rising tension in U.S.-Russian relations," the recording even caught "the clinking of ice in glasses and the scratch of cutlery on plates," not to speak of the intense irritation of both parties.

"Sometimes the tone smacked of the playground" is the way a British report summed the encounter up, but decide for yourself. Here's a sample of what "lunch" sounded like -- the context of the discussion was Iraq (especially outrage over the kidnapping and murder of four employees of the Russian embassy in Baghdad):


"Rice said she worried [Lavrov] was suggesting greater international involvement in Iraq's affairs.

"'I did not suggest this,' Lavrov said. ‘What I did say was not involvement in the political process but the involvement of the international community in support of the political process.'

"'What does that mean?' Rice asked.

"There was a long pause. ‘I think you understand,' he said.

"'No, I don't,' Rice said.

"Lavrov tried to explain, but Rice said she was disappointed. ‘I just want to register that I think it's a pity that we can't endorse something that's been endorsed by the Iraqis and the U.N.,' she said, adding tartly: ‘But if that's how Russia sees it, that's fine.'"


Behind Rice's irritation certainly lay a bad few Russia weeks for the administration. Not only had the Russians been flexing their energy muscles of late, consorting with the Chinese and various of the Soviet Union's former Soviet Socialist Republics in Central Asia, which the Bush administration covets for their energy resources; but, as the ministers were meeting, Russian President Vladimir Putin -- you remember, another one of those world leaders George Bush "looked in the eyes" and found to be "trustworthy" (but that was so long ago) -- made it frustratingly clear that he would not back U.S. moves against neighboring Iran and its putative nuclear program at the UN. "'We do not intend to join any sort of ultimatum, which only pushes the situation into a dead end, striking a blow against the authority of the UN Security Council,' Putin told Russian diplomats in Moscow in the presence of journalists. ‘I am convinced that dialogue and not isolation of one or another state is what leads to resolution of crises.'"

Destabilizing Russia

There is, however, a larger, far more perilous context within which to view the "testy" relationship between the two former Cold War superpowers and, for once, someone has managed to lay it out brilliantly, connecting the dots for the rest of us. In The New American Cold War, the cover story of the most recent Nation magazine, Russia specialist Stephen F. Cohen finally catches the essence of that ever degrading relationship. What Cohen points out is that, after the USSR unraveled, the Cold War never actually ended, not on the American side anyway, and today it not only continues at nearly full blast, but the Russians have finally reentered the game.

To offer a little context: In the early years of the Cold War, when the A-bomb and then the H-bomb were briefly American monopolies, there were, among American hardliners, those who, in the phrase of the time, wanted to "rollback" the Soviet Union in whatever fashion necessary. At an extreme, as early as 1950, the Strategic Air Command's Gen. Curtis LeMay urged the implementation of SAC Emergency War Plan I-49, which involved delivering a first strike of "the entire stockpile of atomic bombs… in a single massive attack," some 133 A-bombs on 70 Soviet cities in 30 days. However, it was another policy, "containment" (first suggested by diplomat George Kennan in his famous "long telegram" from Moscow and then in his 1947 essay, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," written under the pseudonym "Mr. X" in Foreign Affairs magazine), that took hold. Increasingly, as the years went by, as superpower nuclear arsenals came ever closer to parity, the U.S. and the USSR settled into the equivalent of family life together, bickering (at the cost of untold numbers of dead) only on the borderlands of their respective empires. In the later 1960s, containment became detente.

When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 and relaunched the Cold War against the "evil empire," matters threatened to change, but in the end -- despite a massive rearmament campaign (that began in the Carter years) and the launching of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"), meant to militarize space, detente hung in there; finally, to the surprise of all American strategists, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe quickly unraveled without opposition from the remarkable Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (a rare instance of the head of an imperial order not turning to force as it was dismantled). After a moment's hesitation, America's cold warriors, including the massively funded intelligence community which had never so much as suspected the weakened state of the Soviet Union, declared global victory. Much of the rest of the story (the lack of a "peace dividend," the rise of the U.S. as the globe's supposed sole "hyperpower," the way the neoconservatives and others fell in love with American military might and its potential ability to alter the world in directions they passionately desired is now reasonably well known – except for the very large piece of the puzzle Cohen contributed last week.

In his essay, Cohen points out that Russia, despite recent gains, is still in "an unprecedented state of peacetime demodernization and depopulation," suffering "wartime death and birth rates" in a time of relative peace; while its unstable political system rests on the popularity of one man, Vladimir Putin. What was left of the USSR having almost imploded in the 1990s, he writes, even today we cannot be sure what the collapse of a power armed with every imaginable weapon of mass destruction might "mean for the rest of the world."

How, he asks, has every U.S. administration reacted to this globally perilous situation?


"Since the early 1990s Washington has simultaneously conducted, under Democrats and Republicans, two fundamentally different policies toward post-Soviet Russia -- one decorative and outwardly reassuring, the other real and exceedingly reckless. The decorative policy, which has been taken at face value in the United States, at least until recently, professes to have replaced America's previous cold war intentions with a generous relationship of ‘strategic partnership and friendship'… The real US policy has been very different -- a relentless, winner-take-all exploitation of Russia's post-1991 weakness. Accompanied by broken American promises, condescending lectures and demands for unilateral concessions, it has been even more aggressive and uncompromising than was Washington's approach to Soviet Communist Russia… [This policy includes a] growing military encirclement of Russia, on and near its borders, by US and NATO bases, which are already ensconced or being planned in at least half the fourteen other former Soviet republics, from the Baltics and Ukraine to Georgia, Azerbaijan and the new states of Central Asia. The result is a US-built reverse iron curtain and the remilitarization of American-Russian relations."

Destabilizing Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and the United States

This is the new, American-driven cold war -- a striking feature of our landscape, almost utterly ignored by the mainstream media -- that Cohen lays out at length and in compelling detail. Since 2000, these new cold war policies have only taken a turn for the disastrous. From its first moments in office, the Bush administration, made up almost solely of rabid former cold warriors, has been focused with an unprecedented passion and intensity on what can only be called a "rollback" policy. Defined a little more precisely, what they have pursued, as Cohen makes clear, is a policy of Russian "destabilization" with every means at their command -- and, until recently, with some success.

Their view was simple enough. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States was the sole military power of significance left standing. It had, as they saw it, enough excess power to ensure a Pax Americana into the distant future, in part by ensuring that no future or resurgent superpower or bloc of powers would, in any foreseeable future, arise to challenge the United States. As the President put it in an address at West Point in 2002, "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge." The administration's new National Security Strategy of that year seconded the point, adding that the country must be "strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."

This was to be accomplished by:

*ensuring that the former challenging superpower, once rolled back to something like its pre-imperial boundaries, would never arise in any significant new form from the rubble of its failed empire.

*ensuring that no new superpower would arise in economically resurgent Asia; in this regard, the Chinese would be essentially hemmed in, if not encircled, by American (and Japanese) power; a potentially independent Taiwan supported; and the Japanese and Chinese set at each others throats.

*ensuring that the oil heartlands of the planet in what was by then being called an "arc of instability" running from the Central Asian borderlands of Russia and China through the Middle East, North Africa (later, much of the rest of Africa), all the way to Latin America would be dotted with American military bases, anchored in the Middle East by an emboldened Israel and new more pro-American and subservient regimes in formerly enemy states like Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and that the planet's oil flows (hence the fate of the industrialized and industrializing parts of the planet) would remain under American control.

The administration's destabilization strategy, as convincingly laid out by Cohen, was not, however, limited to Russia. The ambitions of top administration officials and their supporters, after all, were world-spanning. (It wasn't for nothing that the neocons and allied pundits began talking about us as the planet's New Rome back in 2002, while we were tearing up treaties, setting up secret prisons, and preparing to launch our first "preventive" war.) In retrospect, it seems clear that destabilization was their modus operandi. Despite what some have argued in relation to Iraq (and elsewhere in the Middle East), they were undoubtedly not voting for chaos per se. What they were eager to do was put the strategically most significant and contested regions of the planet "in play," using the destabilization card, always assuming in every destabilization situation that the chips would fall on their side of the gaming table, and that, if worse came to worse, even chaos would turn out to be to their benefit.

In that spirit, they began working to destabilize Russia, hoping that even if "regime change" weren't possible, all sorts of energy resources and other political and economic fruits would fall their way from the rotting tree of the former Soviet Union. As we know, they didn't hesitate to do the same in Afghanistan, claiming that they were simply taking out al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts (with whom they had, not so long before, been in pipeline negotiations). What they actually did, however, was settle in to that country for the long haul, setting up their normal run of bases and prisons, and in the process not fretting enormously about what destabilization was actually doing there -- creating a narco-warlord-Taliban failed state that now, of course, befuddles them.

Then, as we all know, they invaded Iraq, claiming they were pursuing Saddam Hussein's nonexistent WMD program via "decapitation" shock-and-awe attacks on his regime, the disbanding of his military, the dissolution of the Baath Party, the disbarment of many of its former members from office or jobs, and the dismantling of the state-organized and run economy -- a program of destabilization so sweeping as to take one's breath away and meant to launch a far more sweeping destabilization (and hence remaking) of the Middle East. The results of this project, still in progress, are by now well known -- including the fostering of a complex, bloodthirsty, sectarian bloodletting in Iraq which now threatens to spill across borders into neighboring lands (along with terrorism and oil sabotage).

Their most recent target is Iran -- or rather, ostensibly, Iran's nuclear energy program. In his latest report on the administration's Iranian policy, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh quotes a "high-ranking general" this way: "[T]he military's experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. ‘We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq.'" In fact, as Hersh has previously reported, administration strategists have long been trying to destabilize Iran in a variety of ways, while threatening future military assaults on that country's nuclear establishment. If, at some future point, they were to follow through on this, the results for the global economy would undoubtedly prove both staggering and destabilizing in ways it's quite possible no one could handle.

In the meantime, they have been willing to destabilize the world by essentially growing terror in the pursuit of other ends. Despite the centrality of the "global war on terror" to their plans, it's obvious that the taking out of hostile terrorist groups has not been the only, or even perhaps the primary item on their agenda -- after all, they curtailed the hunt for Osama bin Laden in order to whack Iraq. Rhetoric aside, they seem, in fact, to be quite willing to live with the global phenomenon of ever proliferating, ever more homegrown terrorist organizations.

Though it's been little noted, their program in the United States has been hardly less based on playing the destabilization card. As their minions in occupied Iraq were intent on radically "privatizing" -- that is, destabilizing -- the Iraqi government and economy, so they have been intent on radically privatizing (and destabilizing) the American government and economy. Recently, Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote a striking column, The Road from K Street to Yusufiya, on exactly this, pointing out that "nearly 40 cents of every dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies." It hardly mattered to them that they were essentially emptying civil government of its can-do powers; that they were replacing those hated bureaucrats in Washington with even less competent bureaucrats linked to private, crony corporations of their choice. As Rich put the matter:


"[T]he Bush brand of competitive sourcing, with its get-rich-quick schemes and do-little jobs for administration pals, spread like a cancer throughout the executive branch. It explains why tens of thousands of displaced victims of Katrina are still living in trailer shantytowns all these months later. It explains why New York City and Washington just lost 40 percent of their counterterrorism funds. It helps explain why American troops are more likely to be slaughtered than greeted with flowers more than three years after the American invasion of Iraq.

"The Department of Homeland Security, in keeping with the Bush administration's original opposition to it, isn't really a government agency at all so much as an empty shell, a networking boot camp for future private contractors dreaming of big paydays…"


Caesar's Palace

The top officials of this administration are remarkable gamblers and optimists. They have also proven remarkably single-minded in playing the destabilization game. If they are in the Roman-Empire business, don't think Augustus, think Caesar's Palace. Like so many gambling addicts, they've never run across a situation in which they're unwilling to roll the dice, no matter the odds. They just give those dice that special little rub and offer a prayer for good luck, always knowing that this just has to be their day.

Medicare, roll the dice. Social security, roll the dice. Tax the poor and middle class by untaxing the rich, no problem. Wipe out what's left of the checks and balances of the American system in favor of a theory of an all-encompassing "commander-in-chief" government, roll those dice. Launch endless, Swift-Boat-style, bare-knuckle campaigns of fear, lies, and fantasy (accompanied by gerrymandering and vote-suppression schemes) meant to install Republicans in power for decades to come, no matter the cost to the political system -- don't wait, toss ‘em now!

This is, essentially, a full-scale a program for the destabilization (as well as plundering) of this country, one that fits snugly with their operations potentially destabilizing the planet. And through it all, like the good cold warriors they are, they've never let up on that rollback campaign against Russia. Perhaps, as in the previous century, if all that needed to be compared was the relative powers of two superpowers, their acts, however fierce or cruel, might not have seemed so strategically wrongheaded. Having taken advantage of the weaknesses of their opposite number, administration officials might now be standing tall; while the Russians, crimped, impoverished, embittered, might indeed have been licking their wounds, while complaining angrily but impotently.

Such is not the case. The twenty-first century is already turning out to be far more than a hyperpower, or even a two superpower, world. Before the eyes of much of humanity, between November 2001 and March 2003, the Bush administration decided to demonstrate its singular strength by playing its destabilization trump card and setting in motion the vaunted military power of the United States. To the amazement of almost all, that military, destructive as it proved to be, was stopped in its tracks by two of the less militarily impressive "powers" on this planet -- Afghanistan and Iraq.

Before all eyes, including those of George, Dick, Don, Paul, Stephen, Condi, and their comrades, we visibly grew weaker. While the Bush administration was coveting what the Russians called their "near abroad" -- all those former SSRs around its rim -- and were eagerly peeling them away with "orange," "rose," and "tulip" revolutions, its own "near abroad" (what we used to like to call our Latin "backyard") was peeling away of its own accord, without the aid of a hostile superpower. This would once have been inconceivable, as would another reality -- up-and-coming economic powers like China and India traveling to that same "backyard" looking for energy deals. And yet a destabilized planet invariably means a planet of opportunity for someone.

In fact, Iraq proved such a black hole, so destabilizing for the Bush administration itself that its officials managed to look the other way while China emerged as an organizing power and economic magnet in Asia (a process from which the U.S. was increasingly excluded) and Russian energy reserves gave Putin and pals a new lease on life. Now, administration officials find themselves stunned by the results, which are not likely to be ameliorated by floating a bunch of aircraft-carrier task forces menacingly in the western Pacific.

In one of his recent commentaries, historian Immanuel Wallerstein pointed out that the "American Century," proclaimed by Time and Life Magazine owner Henry Luce in 1943, lasted far less than the expected hundred years. Now, the question -- and except for a few "declinist" scholars like Wallerstein, it would have been an unimaginable one as recently as 2003 -- is: "Whose century is the twenty-first century?" His grim answer: It will be the century of "multi-polar anarchy and wild economic fluctuations."

If you think about it, the single greatest destabilizing gamble this administration has taken has also been the least commented upon. A couple of years back "global warming" was largely a back-page story about tribal peoples having their habitats melted in the far north or finding their islands in danger of flooding somewhere in the distant Pacific. It was all ice all the time and if you didn't live near a glacier or somewhere in the tundra, it didn't have much to do with you -- and certainly nothing whatsoever to do with those nasty hurricanes that seemed to be increasing in strength in the Atlantic as were typhoons in the Pacific.

Now, global warming is front-page stuff and you don't have to go far to find it. Alaska isn't just melting any more, we are. Lately, a plethora of major stories and prime-time TV news reports have regularly talked not about the north, but about the planet "running a slight fever from greenhouse gases," or undergoing unexpectedly "abrupt" climate change, or of the U.S. itself having its warmest years in its history -- something reflected even in local headlines (For N. Texas, it's warmest year on record). And yet in our media the Bush administration still largely gets a free pass on the subject. No major cover stories are yet taking on the ultimate destabilization gamble of this administration, the fact that they are playing not just with the fate of this or that superpower or set of minor powers, but with that of the human race itself.

The willingness of the President and his officials to bet the store on the possibility that global warming doesn't exist, or won't hit as ferociously as expected, or soon enough to affect them, or will be solved by some future quick-fix still isn't thought of as real front-page news. In other words, their maddest gamble of all, next to which the destabilization of Iran or Russia dwindles to nothing, receives little attention. And yet, based on their track record, we know just what they are going to do -- throw those dice again.

For George W. Bush and his top officials, taking the long-term heat on this probably isn't really an issue. They have the mentality not just of gamblers but of looters and in a couple of years, if worse comes to worse, they can head for Crawford or Wyoming or estates and ranches elsewhere to hunt fowl and drink mai tais. It's the rest of us, and especially our children and grandchildren, who will still be here on this destabilized, energy-hungry planet without an air conditioner in sight.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has just come out in paperback.

2006 Tom Engelhardt

The real aims of the US-backed Israeli war against Lebanon
Statement of the Editorial Board
21 July 2006
wsws.org

As the onslaught against Lebanon enters its tenth day, Israeli troops are poised for a full-scale invasion that has been prepared by murderous aerial bombardment, and the far-reaching imperialist aims of the war have become all too clear.

With the full political, financial and military backing of the United States, the Zionist regime is attempting to transform Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. This military operation is a continuation and escalation of the imperialist geo-political restructuring of the Middle East and Central Asia that began with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose goal is the establishment of US domination of the entire region.

The immediate aim of this war—the elimination of Hezbollah as a military and political force within Lebanon—is directed against all mass resistance to Israeli and American domination of the country. The Bush administration and its allies in Jerusalem see this as an essential step toward: 1) the removal of the Syrian Baathist regime, and 2) the launching of a full-scale war against Iran.

While the Israeli government and the Bush administration endlessly repeat propaganda claims that the attack on Lebanon is an act of “self defense” prompted by the seizure of two soldiers, this assertion enjoys no credibility among knowledgeable observers.


As the Financial Times of London wrote in its lead editorial of July 17, “Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon by land, sea and air in response to Hezbollah’s cross-border raid last week is now about a great deal more than recovering two Israeli soldiers seized by Islamist guerrillas—and it probably always was.”

Similar assessments have been published in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous newspapers internationally. They simply state what is by now obvious: the Israeli attack on Lebanon is the realization of a long-planned act of aggression.

Recent events have placed in clearer perspective the significance of the February, 2005 assassination of the Lebanese multi-billionaire and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Hariri was killed by a massive explosion that destroyed his motorcade in Beirut four months after he resigned his post as prime minister in protest against the decision of Emile Lahoud, an ally of Syria, to extend his term as president of Lebanon. The United States and France, the country’s former colonial ruler, immediately blamed Hariri’s death on Damascus. Their anti-Syrian allies within Lebanon, predominantly based on the more affluent social layers, seized upon Hariri’s killing to launch the so-called Cedar Revolution, which resulted last year in the withdrawal of Syrian troops, which had occupied Lebanon since the 1970s.

If, in fact, the Syrian regime was behind the killing, it carried it out because it had become convinced that Hariri had lent his support to a US-Israeli plan to drive Syria out of Lebanon, in preparation for an assault on the Hezbollah movement, which enjoys mass support among the impoverished Shiite population and dominates the south of Lebanon. It was well aware that this would be followed by an offensive against the Baathist regime in Damascus itself.

It is, on the other hand, eminently possible that the killing was a provocation organized by Israeli or American intelligence agencies for the purpose of creating a pretext for carrying through the same plan.

In either case, the current Israeli offensive is the implementation of precisely such an operation. The Cedar Revolution itself produced disappointing results in the eyes of the Israelis and Americans. Under the terms of a United Nations Security Council resolution co-sponsored by Washington and Paris, Syria was obliged to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. The power of its Hezbollah ally, however, remained intact.

Indeed, at the height of the anti-Syrian agitation, marked by well-publicized demonstrations in Beirut organized by Maronite Christian forces and other Lebanese parties aligned with Washington, Hezbollah organized far larger counter-demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of the capital. With the specter of a new civil war before it, the government that emerged from the Cedar Revolution felt obliged to make a settlement which included the admission of Hezbollah representatives into the cabinet.

In an article published July 20, the New York Times reflected the frustration within the Bush administration and American ruling circles: “Despite the hopes raised by the so-called Cedar Revolution, which ended nearly three decades of Syrian control, the government remains trapped in the sectarian straitjacket of a system that apportions political offices by religion.” (The Times has no similar objections to the “sectarian straitjacket” of Lebanon’s neighbor to the south, which not only apportions all political power to representatives of one religion, but defines itself as a “Jewish state”).

This comment points to the real purpose of the current onslaught against the Lebanese people. Its aim is a thoroughgoing political restructuring of the country, in which the fiercely pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiments of the Shiite masses are to be crushed and the power of right-wing, pro-US forces—above all, the Christian Phalange—vastly expanded.

This is an attempt to reverse the outcome of the Lebanese civil war, which raged from 1975 until 1990. The US, Israel and other imperialist powers, notably France, played a central role in inciting that long and bloody conflict and keeping it going, including the introduction of American and French military forces and an Israeli invasion in 1982 that was followed by an 18-year Israeli occupation of the south. Washington’s chief ally was the fascistic Phalange, which headed a coalition of right-wing forces arrayed against an alliance of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Left.

Imperialist intrigue and intervention succeeded in driving the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon, but the eventual settlement curtailed the power of the Phalange, on the one hand, and saw the rise of the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah on the other. This is what Washington is determined to change. Significantly, the current Israeli offensive has enabled the US to move its military forces into Lebanon for the first time since they were withdrawn in the aftermath of the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in October of 1983.


The historical background

Israel has a long history of attempting to transform Lebanon, through a combination of military pressure and political alliances with right-wing forces in that country, into a virtual protectorate.

In March 1978, in the midst of the Lebanese civil war, Israel sent military forces across the border into Lebanon, justifying its actions as a response to PLO terrorist activity. Though compelled by international pressure to withdraw after its military operations had resulted in more than 2,000 Lebanese deaths, Israel maintained control of a 12-mile strip north of the border by sponsoring a right-wing militia, dubbed the South Lebanon Army, under the proxy leadership of one Major Saad Haddad.

Four years later, in 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, set into motion a far more ambitious plan to take political control of all Lebanon and expel the PLO from the country. Once again, a convenient pretext was found when an Israeli ambassador was wounded in London by a Palestinian assassin in June 1982. Though intelligence experts acknowledged that the PLO had nothing to do with this incident, the Begin government used the event as a pretext to invade Lebanon. In an operation entitled, with consummate cynicism, “Peace for Galilee,” Israeli troops swept north toward the outskirts of Beirut, which was subjected to protracted bombing.

The war forced the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon and led to the Israeli-sanctioned slaughter of thousands of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese fascist militiamen.

The United States also became involved in the subjugation of Lebanon, with the Reagan administration stationing Marines in Beirut. But direct US participation in attacks on the poorer neighborhoods of Beirut (which were shelled by American naval vessels) created deep hostility, leading to the suicide bombing in which nearly 250 Marines were killed. The Reagan administration decided to cut its losses and withdraw from Lebanon.

The Israeli regime, however, sought to maintain control over substantial portions of south Lebanon. It was out of the popular resistance to the occupation that Hezbollah emerged as a powerful military and political force. The guerrilla war conducted by Hezbollah eventually forced Israel to withdraw its forces in 2000.


Israeli military tactics

The current war is not only about wiping out Hezbollah, but destroying any resistance within Lebanon to US and Israeli domination. This desired end goes a long way in explaining the means that are being employed. Israel is carrying out an indiscriminate bombardment of the south, the home of the poor Shiite population and the main base of support for Hezbollah. The Israeli military is deliberately targeting the entire civilian population, destroying whole villages and making the entire region uninhabitable.


The Washington Post reported Thursday that Israel has ordered all Lebanese living in the southern sector below the Litani River to evacuate the region within 24 hours.

The goal is to turn south Lebanon into a no man’s land so as to prepare the ground for the entry of either Israeli troops or a combination of Israeli and American forces, with perhaps other national contingents operating as an “international peace keeping force” with the imprimatur of the United Nations.

The Israeli offensive is above all a war against the Lebanese poor. The more affluent residential neighborhoods of Beirut and other parts of the country have been largely spared. This is in keeping with US and Israeli policy during the civil war, when they were allied with the Phalange against the Shiite masses and the Palestinian refugee population.

The unleashing of death and destruction against southern Lebanon is combined with a bombing campaign aimed at the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut and against airports, ports, roads, bridges and power stations in the rest of the country. The objective is to wreck the country’s infrastructure. In order to remake Lebanon politically, it first must be gutted physically. This gives some idea of what US imperialism and its junior partner, Israel, have in store for the people of Syria, Iran and beyond.

Nor is there any reason to believe Israel’s disavowals of plans for a full-scale ground invasion. The more Israeli leaders discount such a move, the more likely it becomes. While the scale of the bombing in south Lebanon is sufficient to kill many thousands of people, it will not achieve Israel’s aims of destroying Hezbollah as a military and political force, and converting Lebanon into a Zionist protectorate.

Citing the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, NBC’s evening news program reported Thursday that several thousand Israeli troops have begun crossing the border into southern Lebanon.


The role of the United States

The United States is playing a decisive role in the war. It sanctioned the war in advance and is working in the closest collaboration with the Israeli military’s US-made and American-financed war machine to carry it out.

On the diplomatic level, the Bush administration is openly aligning its moves with the military objectives and political calculations of the Israeli government. Washington is coordinating US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s impending visit to the region with Israel to give the Israeli military all the time it wants to inflict maximum possible destruction in south Lebanon. As the New York Times reported on July 19, “American officials signaled that Ms. Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah forces.”

There is no precedent for the US government’s open opposition to a ceasefire. The Wall Street Journal, in a fairly frank assessment of US policy published July 19, began by recalling Washington’s diplomatic role when the last major conflict erupted between Israel and Hezbollah:

“Ten years ago, when Hezbollah and Israeli forces engaged in a multiweek bloodbath, President Clinton sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the region for six days of intensive shuttle diplomacy between Damascus and Jerusalem. In the end, he won a cease-fire deal that ended the fighting, at least temporarily.

“Today, the Bush administration has a starkly different approach.”

The US is fully and openly legitimizing war as an instrument of foreign policy. This is a continuation of its military aggression in Iraq, and an anticipation of future aggression against Syria, Iran, and other countries. It is bound up with the Bush doctrine of “preemptive war,” which has been embraced by the entire American political establishment and both parties of American imperialism—the Democrats as well as the Republicans.

Washington’s determined effort to allow Israel to continue the slaughter in Lebanon underscores that the current war is part of US imperialism’s drive, by any and all means, to establish American supremacy throughout the Middle East.

Whether this reckless and criminal military adventure will, in the short term, further this objective or lead Washington into an even deeper debacle in the region remains to be seen.

Cheney Behind New Mideast War Drive: Return of 'Clean Break'
by Jeffrey Steinberg
This article appears in the October 17, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.


With very little fanfare, in September David Wurmser moved over from the State Department office of arms control chief and leading war-party agitator John Bolton, to the Old Executive Office Building, working directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Wurmser's move was highly significant, given that the former American Enterprise Institute and Washington Institute for Near East Policy neo-conservatives was one of the primary authors of the now-infamous 1996 "A Clean Break" document, which spelled out the current joint Mideast war strategy of the Ariel Sharon government in Israel and the Cheney cabal inside the Bush Administration in the United States.

Just days after Wurmser joined the Vice President's "shadow national security council," the Bush Administration—at Cheney's urging—made an abrupt shift in policy towards Syria, a shift that has now brought the entire Mideast region to the brink of war and chaos—worse, even, than the fiasco of the American occupation of Iraq, which military experts are increasingly describing as "our new Vietnam" (see page 60).

At an American Enterprise Institute event on Oct. 7, Leo Strauss acolyte William Kristol, the publisher and editor of the Weekly Standard, candidly admitted that he was miffed that the United States had not already moved beyond the Iraq war to the "next regime change" of "the next horrible" Middle East Arab "dictator"—Syrian President Bashar Assad.

'A Clean Break' Revisited
Turn the clock back seven years. On July 8, 1996, Richard Perle, currently a member, and formerly the head of the Defense Policy Board in the Don Rumsfeld Pentagon, delivered a document to the new Israeli Prime Minister, Jabotinskyite Benjamin Netanyahu. Perle, and a team of American neo-cons, had been tasked by Netanyahu—through the Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS)—to draft a strategy for abrogating the Oslo Accords and overturning the entire concept of "comprehensive land for peace," in favor of a jackboot policy of U.S.-Israeli-Turkish raw military conquest and occupation.

The short policy memo, which Netanyahu, and his successor-Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, totally adopted as the core strategy of their administrations, spelled out a four-pronged attack on the peace process and the entire Arab world. It has become a self-evident truth that, since the Bush "43" and Sharon governments came into power simultaneously in early 2001, "A Clean Break" has been the guiding strategic doctrine of both—particularly following the irregular warfare attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Perle-Wurmser policy document demanded: 1) Destroy Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, blaming them for every act of Palestinian terrorism, including the attacks from Hamas, an organization which Sharon had helped launch during his early 1980s tenure as Minister of Defense. 2) Induce the United States to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. 3) Launch war against Syria after Saddam's regime is disposed of, including striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and targets in Syria proper. 4) Parlay the overthrow of the Ba'athist regimes in Baghdad and Damascus into the "democratization" of the entire Arab world, including through further military actions against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and "the ultimate prize," Egypt (see Documentation following for the "Clean Break" report).

On Oct. 5, for the first time in 30 years, Israel launched bombing raids against Syria, targetting a purported "Palestinian terrorist camp" inside Syrian territory. The bombing immediately raised fears that Sharon is preparing a nuclear strike, most likely against Iran. A senior Israeli intelligence source told EIR that Sharon's action was clearly backed by the "pro-Sharon" crowd in Washington, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: "They continue to be committed to their basic plan: Destroy Iran and Syria, and make Israel the dominant power in the region, and drive the Palestinians across the Jordan River." The source added that there "is obviously an agreement in Washington to do nothing." In a press conference a day after the Israel attack on Syria, President George W. Bush said Sharon had the right to "defend his own people," and then added, "We would be doing the same thing."

'Clean Break' Who's WhoIn addition to arch-chicken-hawk Richard Perle, the other participants in the "Clean Break" exercise now constitute the hard core of the neo-con apparatus poisoning the Bush Administration.

The principal author of "Clean Break" and a series of follow-on IASPS strategy papers elaborating the new balance of power schema for the Middle East, was David Wurmser, now in the Office of Vice President Cheney. Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser, another of the "Clean Break" authors, is the head of Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, a neo-con hotbed, heavily financed by Lord Conrad Black, owner of the Hollinger Corporation and sugar-daddy to Richard Perle, who was installed by Black on the Hudson Institute board as soon as the London-based publisher poured a pile of cash into the think tank at the start of the Bush "43" Presidency. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University, by researching the life and works of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and a self-professed fascist. Before coming to Hudson, she headed the Washington office of the Middle East Research and Investigation Project (MERIP), of Col. Yigal Carmon, a retired Israeli Army Intelligence careerist, who is hard-wired into the U.S.A. neo-con gang.

Meyrav Wurmser has taken the point in promoting the overthrow of the House of Saud and the American military occupation of the Saudi Arabian oil fields, through a string of Hudson Institute policy papers, commentaries, and seminars.

Hudson has also played a pivotal role in the drive for war against Syria and Lebanon, as spelled out in "Clean Break." On March 7, 2003, Hudson sponsored a forum addressed by Gen. Michel Aoun, who was Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1988-1990, and who is pushing a military action against Syria, right out of the pages of "Clean Break."

Other authors of the 1996 war scheme were: Douglas Feith, now Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the overseer of the Office of Special Plans "information warfare" unit, which was instrumental in the black propaganda campaign to sell President Bush and the U.S. Congress on the Iraq war; and Charles Fairbanks, Jr., a longtime friend and disciple of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, dating back to their graduate studies under Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. Fairbanks is now at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

From Words to Warfare
On Sept. 16, just as David Wurmser was going to Cheney's office to replace Eric Edelman, a longtime Wolfowitz protege now tapped to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, the Syria war drive was seriously launched. Chief arms control provocateur John Bolton was given the green light to testify before a House International Relations subcommittee hearing on Syria and Lebanon. That testimony had been held up for several months, as the result of a direct intervention by the Central Intelligence Agency, which issued a highly unusual white paper challenging many of Bolton's planned allegations of Syrian current involvement in terrorist operations and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

The fact that Bolton was given the go-ahead to Capitol Hill signalled that Cheney had scored a tactical victory over those in the Bush Administration who were promoting a dialogue with Damascus. In fact, Bolton's provocative testimony undercut quiet efforts, then under way, to establish fresh channels of cooperation between the United States and the Assad government.

The day after Bolton's appearance, the same House subcommittee continued the anti-Damascus rant, by hosting General Aoun and rabid chicken-hawk Daniel Pipes, who demanded an immediate confrontation with Syria.

This public display of venom in Washington was all the signal that Ariel Sharon needed. On Oct. 5, Israeli Air Force jets bombed a Palestinian camp deep inside Syrian territory, ostensibly in retaliation for an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in Haifa the day before. However, the Sharon war cabinet had approved a Syrian bombing six weeks earlier. The Bolton appearance and the promotion of Wurmser into Cheney's inner sanctum just served as the green light.

To make the linkage between the Israeli actions and the Cheney-led Bush Administration tilt even even more transparent, on Oct. 8 the White House announced that it would no longer oppose Congressional passage of the Syrian Accountability and Restoration of Lebanese Sovereignty Act, the equivalent to the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act which set in motion the drive towards war against Saddam Hussein.

This time, Sharon and Cheney do not intend to wait five years to get their war. Unless they are stopped, their timetable is to have Israel launch war on Syria by November 2003. And heaven help the American GIs in Iraq if Sharon and Cheney get their way. As Lyndon LaRouche has demanded, "Beast-man" Cheney needs to be dumped from power within the next 30 days; and, along with him, the entire neo-con cabal. As Bush "41" and Karl Rove must understand by now, Cheney and his gang of "Clean Break" fanatics are the albatross around George W. Bush's neck, and time is running out.

Bush admin lied to congress, again
By Evan Derkacz
Posted on July 25, 2006, Printed on July 25, 2006

The Washington Post revealed today that the Bush administration knew of a massive Pakistani nuclear reactor in the works -- capable of producing 50 warheads/year -- but didn't tell congress.

And the article contains what may well be the quote of the year (in bold type):


"What is baffling is that this information -- which was surely information that our own intelligence agencies had -- was kept from Congress," said Sokolski, now director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. "We lack imagination if we think that this is no big deal."

As Marcy Wheeler notes, the Bush administration hid disputes over Iraqi capabilities, dismissed a memo disputing the Niger claims and, not as widely known, it hid information on North Korean nuclear capability (much farther along than Iraq's) just prior to the vote to invade Iraq.

And now this. But it gets worse. In Ron Suskind's One Percent Doctrine -- which has already burned through two highlighter pens -- he delves deep into the Pakistan/U.S. relations, a dumpster dive if I've ever seen one.

The world's foremost supplier of nuclear technology to anyone with a checkbook, A.Q. Khan -- friend and adviser to Pakistan's dictator, Musharraf -- was busy, according to the CIA in 2001 (THAT'S 2001), dealing nuclear technology to Iran.

So the Bush administration knew that Iran, Libya, and North Korea were receiving weapons technology from their Pakistani allies' friend and adviser, yet they chose to invade Iraq.

A footnote: the "disarming" of Libya was a complete and total lie -- a fabrication.

Gadhafi and the Bush administration had been negotiating a mutually beneficial deal for quite some time, through Musa Kousa, Ghadafi's close adviser.

Kousa turned over intelligence on terrorists to the U.S. -- and negotiated a settlement with the Pan Am Lockerbie families -- in exchange for a high profile Libyan WMD disarmament intended to look like a success for the Bush/Cheney doctrine of Kick Arab Asses till the say Uncle.

Suskind writes, on page 271:

As for George W. Bush, he got to say, countless times, the thing he desperately wanted to say to help offset the crumbling Iraq experiment, a measurable "saving face" aria: that Gadhafi had given up his weapons because of how the U.S. invasion of Iraq had changed the landscape.


That was false, as were, in essence, almost all the public statements by all the involved parties in this so-called "double-play." It wasn't a matter of misstatement: whether it was Musharraf or Bush, everyone knew they were lying.

Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Program
Plant Underway Could Generate Plutonium for 40 to 50 Bombs a Year, Analysts Say.
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 24, 2006

Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region's arms race.

Satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.

The construction site is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a modest, 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. By contrast, the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. Pakistan is believed to have 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles.

"South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.

The assessment's key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway.

"Pakistan's nuclear program has matured. We're now consolidating the program with further expansions," the official said. The expanded program includes "some civilian nuclear power and some military components," he said.

The development raises fresh concerns about a decades-old rivalry between Pakistan and India. Both countries already possess dozens of nuclear warheads and a variety of missiles and other means for delivering them.

Pakistan, like India, has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of its pioneering nuclear scientists, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed two years ago to operating a network that supplied nuclear materials and know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

The evidence of a possible escalation also comes as Congress prepares to debate a controversial nuclear cooperation agreement between the Bush administration and India. The agreement would grant India access to sensitive U.S. nuclear technology in return for placing its civilian nuclear reactors under tighter safeguards.

No such restrictions were placed on India's military nuclear facilities. India currently has an estimated 30 to 35 nuclear warheads based on a sophisticated plutonium design. Pakistan, which uses a simpler, uranium-based warhead design, has sought for years to modernize its arsenal, and a new heavy-water reactor could allow it to do so, weapons experts say.

"With plutonium bombs, Pakistan can fully join the nuclear club," said a Europe-based diplomat and nuclear expert, speaking on condition that he not be identified by name, after reviewing the satellite evidence. He concurred with the Institute for Science and International Security assessment but offered a somewhat lower estimate -- "up to tenfold" -- for the increase in Pakistan's plutonium production. A third, U.S.-based expert concurred fully with the institute's estimates.

Pakistan launched its nuclear program in the early 1970s and conducted its first successful nuclear test in 1998.

The completion of the first, 50-megawatt plutonium production reactor in Pakistan's central Khushab district was seen as a step toward modernizing the country's arsenal. The reactor is capable of producing about 10 kilograms of plutonium a year, enough for about two warheads.

Construction of the larger reactor at Khushab apparently began sometime in 2000. Satellite photos taken in the spring of 2005 showed the frame of a rectangular building enclosing what appeared to be the round metal shell of a large nuclear reactor. A year later, in April 2006, the roof of the structure was still incomplete, allowing an unobstructed view of the reactor's features.

"The fact that the roof is still off strikes me as a sign that Pakistan is neither rushing nor attempting to conceal," said Albright of the institute.

The slow pace of construction could suggest difficulties in obtaining parts, or simply that other key facilities for plutonium bomb-making are not yet in place, the institute report concludes. Pakistan would probably need to expand its capacity for producing heavy water for its new reactor, as well as its ability to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract the plutonium, the report says.

After comparing a sequence of satellite photos, the institute analysts estimated that the new reactor was still "a few years" from completion. The diameter of the structure's metal shell suggests a very large reactor "operating in excess of 1,000 megawatts thermal," the report says.

"Such a reactor could produce over 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power a modest 220 days per year," it says. "At 4 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of over 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year."

There was no immediate reaction to the report from the Bush administration. Albright said he shared his data with government nuclear analysts, who did not dispute his conclusions and appeared to already know about the new reactor.

"If there's an increasing risk of an arms race in South Asia, why hasn't this already been introduced into the debate?" Albright asked. He said the Pakistani development adds urgency to calls for a treaty halting the production of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.

"The United States needs to push more aggressively for a fissile material cut-off treaty, and so far it has not," he said.

Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, and researcher Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.