MILITARY OCCUPATIONS, PART 3: I first met Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli peace activist, in a PLO office in Tunis in the mid-1980s. Uri has sure hung in there over the years! (I saw him at the Tel Aviv offices of his present organization, Gush Shalom/ the Peace Bloc, just last June.) Today, I got an email from GS, in which Uri had penned some very thought-provoking notes about the present US-Iraqi war. Among them were the two notes that follow:
[I should note that I’m a little troubled by Uri’s apparent recourse to group-stereotyping in the title of the first of these notes. But that’s what he chose. And the content of what he writes there is really important. Plus it tracks totally with what I wrote in my recent lengthy screed on comparative military occupations. Anyway, over to Uri… ]
# Beware of the Shiites.
The troubles of the occupation will start after the fighting is over. Here is a personal story and its lessons:
On the fourth day of the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I crossed the border at a lone spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which had already reached the outskirts of Sidon. I was driving my private car, accompanied only by a woman photographer. We passed a dozen Shiite villages and were received everywhere with great joy. We extracted ourselves only with great difficulty from hundreds of villagers, each one insisting that we have coffee at their home. On the previous days, they had showered the soldiers with rice.
A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite direction, from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers were now wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, many were on the verge of panic.
What had happened? The Shiites received the Israeli soldiers as liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers, they started to kill them.
When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon, the Shiites were a down-trodden, powerless community, held in contempt by all the others. After a year of fighting the occupiers, they became a political and military power. The Shiite Hizbullah is the only military force in the Arab world that has beaten the mighty Israeli army.
Sharon is the real father of the Shiite force in Lebanon. Bush may well become the father of Shiite power in Iraq. The Shiites, 60% of the Iraqi population, have been until now down-trodden and powerless. When they will realize that the Americans intend to stay, they will start a deadly guerilla. Bush does not intend to leave Iraq, as Sharon did not intend to leave Lebanon.
Then what? America will argue that Iran, the great Shiite neighbor, is behind the Shiite guerilla. In Iran there is a lot of oil. That?s the next target.
# Germany.
Germany is against the war. Against any war. In no other country was the anti-war outburst so authentic, emanating from the innermost feelings of the masses.
And who is furious about this? Israel, the country of the Holocaust survivors. How do they dare, these damn Germans, to object to the war?
A sad irony of history: all German TV stations show citizens, intellectuals and ordinary folk, who pray for peace, all Israeli TV screens show retired generals, obviously enjoying themselves, discussing with great relish how to employ giant bombs and other instruments
of death.
… So folks, if you want to see more of what Uri writes, and what his organization does, go to their site. Toda and Shalom, Uri.
Author: Helena
MORE ON MICHELE AND GLADYS:
MORE ON MICHELE AND GLADYS: So I wrote here Thursday night about the civil disobedience action that some Quakers and others here in Charlottesville undertook that afternoon. What I failed to put in was any part of the lovely statement that Michele Mattioli had prepared, that explained what they were doing. Here are some extracts:
We are citizens who oppose war. Killing people is never the way to solve a problem…
We love our country, which is full of generous and kind people. We support our troops by doing whatever we can to stop the war and bring them home. Killing and risking death damages these men and women, and we demand an end to the war so we can receive them back into our communities to get on with their lives…
Violence only begets more violence, and there are non-violent ways to deal effectively with tyrants.
The old world order in which power resided in guns and money is crimbling. Millions of people are standing up to say that true power comes from justice, love and compassion. This new power is welling up and will prevail.
During the action Thursday, shortly before the police came, Michele came out of Congressman Goode’s office and told the antiwar protesters arrayed outside that she had been a Montessori teacher for more than 20 years. “And I always used to tell my children, over and over and over, ‘Don’t hit! Don’t hit! Use words!‘” She got a huge cheer for that.
Also, in my earlier post I mistakenly described Gladys Swift as a late-70-something. She is in fact 80.
And later, she told me she was really upset that the police refused to arrest her. They put her with the one 16-year-old taking part and only gave the two of them some kind of summons to appear later for a scolding.
What kind of ageism is that??
Anyway, I also didn’t quite get the end of my earlier post written well. What I should have written was, that if Mr. Goode can’t be persuaded to represent his constituents more effectively, why, then maybe at the next election we’ll just have to look for Mr. or Ms. Very Much Better!
FOUND! A WORTH-READING ISRAELI BLOG:
FOUND! A WORTH-READING ISRAELI BLOG: From Salam via Diane I found a good-to-read blog by an Israeli. At last! Someone who writes from the heart. She’s Imshin. For some reason her blog is called “Not a Fish”. Her definition of it is: “The meaningless chatter of your regular split personality Israeli mother trying to make sense of current insanity.”
But no, Imshin, I don’t think it’s meaningless at all. It gives a great flavor of what life must be like for you. I found your post about teaching your kids about their gas masks very moving and real. There’s lots of other good stuff on there as well. As soon as I dare fiddle with the JWN template again I’ll put a permanent link to “Not a Fish” in there.
Of course, it would still be great if we could think that the Palestinians in the occupied territories had anything like the gas-masks and other civil-defense preparations and facilities that Israelis have. But still, the situation Imshin writes about is the one that, I imagine, many many Israelis are in.
MORE ON OCCUPATIONS– JAPAN AND
MORE ON OCCUPATIONS– JAPAN AND IRAQ: What I forgot to mention in my earlier long screed on comparative occupation-ology was that there’s a great article by the historian of modern Japan John Dower, in the current issue of Boston Review in which he elegantly and to my view convincingly debunks the idea that we can make a meaningful analogy between what the American occupation of Japan achieved and what we might expect the American occupation of Iraq to achieve.
(In that same issue, there’s also my piece on Syria and the prospect of democratization, and a good piece by Neta Crawford on pre-emption.)
MILITARY OCCUPATIONS: THE GOOD, THE
MILITARY OCCUPATIONS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE POSSIBLY UGLY: Okay, George Bush has set us on the path of war, and in the days ahead Iraqi people, Iraqi conscripts, the fighting members of the all-volunteer US and British armies and numerous other human groups near and far from the battlefield have, as a consequence, been put squarely in harm’s way.
I, of all people, don’t want to elide that fact.
However, soberly speaking, there is every prospect from what we know that the US military will “prevail” militarily. So it is really important to start looking at what comes next…
Earlier today, I wrote an incredibly long post that surveyed various military occupations over the past 60 years, judging which seemed to have worked well, and which not… For the whole text of that post, go here. And this was my bottom line:
Which leaves us as Americans where?
Paying the cost of this occupation ourselves. And we can ask the Israelis how high those costs might be.
FINALLY GOT THE INDEX HERE
FINALLY GOT THE INDEX HERE FIXED?? I still can’t figure what was wrong with the coding Blogger and I had put into the archives for the past couple of weeks, but I went into the HTML and there were some really nasty extra characters in there… I cleaned it up by hand (being a good housewife, heh-heh-heh) and now I think the index WORKS.
Please, friends, tell me if you try it and it doesn’t.
Also, if anyone can figure how or why those extra characters got into the archives there, and how I could prevent that happening in the future– please let me know!!! Thanks!
SO IT’S STARTED: The 17-year-old
SO IT’S STARTED: The 17-year-old just broke the news to me about the bombing having started. I clicked onto CNN.com. “Mommy?” she said, hanging round my door in her bath-robe. I said, “D’you want a hug?” “No… aw, yes then.”
We hugged. “I mean,” she said, “I feel a lot, lot worse for other people.”
“Yup. But you know what, I’m afraid the world we’re going to be handing over to you and your lot will be a far worse world for everyone, you included. I’m really, really sorry ’bout that. Sorry we screwed up– ”
“Did you feel that way, Mom? When you were my age?”
“No, really I didn’t. When I was your age I felt the world my Dad and his generation were handing over was pretty secure, all in all.”
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“It’s okay. You know, I think you and Dad did your best– ”
“Yeah, well, we still screwed up.”
A QUAKER SALUTE TO SOLDIERS
A QUAKER SALUTE TO SOLDIERS IN NASIRIYAH: My friend Rick McCutcheon is a Canadian Quaker. In 2000-2001, he and his wife Tamara Fleming served as joint field representatives to Iraq for Quaker and Mennonite service bodies. In the March 2003 issue of The Canadian Friend, Rick has published a recollection of one particularly poignant encounter he had with an Iraqi military unit. I’ll post the start of the piece here, with the permission of both Rick and The Canadian Friend:
A Quaker Salute to Soldiers in Nasiriyah, by Richard McCutcheon
There is a town about 375 kilometers south of Baghdad called Nasiriyah. Tamara and I came to love it while we lived in Iraq, and traveled there several times. Those familiar with the Bible may know it by its biblical name, Ur, the place where Abraham is said to have lived for about 65 years. Someday, when times are different, we have talked about going back to live in Nasiriyah — just to live with and learn from the people there. To get acquainted, perhaps, with the works of Haboobi, the patron poet of the city, whose statue stands in the center of the round-about in the heart of the town.
Nasiriyah is located on the banks of the Euphrates river. The Al-Janoob Hotel, where we stayed whenever we visited Nasiriyah, is on the road that runs along the river. When you exit the front door of the hotel, walk across the road, and pass through a small park not more than 10 meters across, you come to a paved promenade with a low wall running along the river bank. It is a short hop over the wall and down to the water’s edge. It’s truly a beautiful spot — I see it in my mind’s eye this very moment
as I write this sitting at my desk.
One morning I woke up quite early. Sleep wouldn’t come to me, so I thought I might as well get up. I happen to be an avid amateur photographer. The idea — perhaps rooted in some romantic notion of the Euphrates — came to me to go down to the water’s edge in the early pre-dawn light to take a picture of the river. I knew that this was not something that I was supposed to do — that is, to go out on my own, especially in a southern town known for its anti-government tendencies. In retrospect, I might have got the government official who traveled with us into trouble, not to mention my wife and I. But I went ahead and got dressed, slung my old Nikon camera over my shoulder, and headed for the river…
Read the rest here.
THE EFFECT OF THIS WAR
THE EFFECT OF THIS WAR ON IRAN: Juan R. Cole, who’s probably the best informed, sanest, and most articulate person around who writes on Iran, has given me permission to use the following assessment, penned March 17, on JWN. I should add that for his day job, Cole’s a distinguished Professor of History at the University of Michigan.
It seems to me that the likely scenario in Iran after an American Iraq war is … that it will rehabilitate nativism and anti-imperialism and help restore the popularity of the hardliners. While one cannot know for sure, it is even possible that the good performance of the conservatives in Tehran’s municipal elections was already in at least small part a sign of public concern about a return to U.S. hegemony.
When the US was far away, Khamenei’s anti-Washington rhetoric sounded increasingly old-fashioned and from another era. With GIs stomping all over Shiite Iraqi areas with large boots, occasionally shooting Shiites, and being in charge of the shrines at Najaf and Karbala, the potential for the US to give offense to Shiite Iranians is manifold. One could imagine enraged Revolutionary Guards slipping over the border to hit US troops, and an escalating series of reprisals and counter-reprisals.
Iranians have been politically mobilized during the past 25 years, and cannot be expected to react to such events sanguinely. Some young people may initially welcome the idea of greater US presence in the area, but that is likely to get old fast (remember a lot of Shiites in Lebanon at first thought the idea of an Israeli invasion in 1982 was a good one).
The hawks in Washington have failed to come to terms with mass political mobilization as a factor in decolonization. Their basic philosophy is that non-European peoples are easily led and easily fooled. It was the philosophy of the British Viceroys of India in the 1930s and 1940s, and of Anthony Eden and David Ben-Gurion in the 1950s and it was false. (Its falseness is even demonstrated by the hawks’ recent humiliating failures in diplomacy at the UN and among world publics). Neocolonial arrangements can sometimes be made with fair success via local proxies, but whenever the veil slips too much and the hegemony becomes revealed as foreign domination, there is trouble. I don’t think the American planners of post-war Iraq, who are both incredibly arrogant and incredibly ignorant of history, understand the need for a light touch. And I don’t think Iran will react well to a heavy hand.
BUSH CONVERTS TO KEYNESIANISM– JUST
BUSH CONVERTS TO KEYNESIANISM– JUST NOT FOR DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION? Among the many unseemly and downright scandalous aspects of this war (which I need not list here), one of the most distasteful has been the spate of reports that the administration is already preparing to hand out large contracts to large U.S. firms, to engage in the “post-war reconstruction” of Iraq.
In a good piece in today’s NYT, Elizabeth Becker quotes unnamed administration officials as saying the administration is already offering $1.5 billion-worth of contracts to private US companies– and just $50 million to not-for-profit US groups like Save the Children– while bypassing the many highly experienced multilateral relief and development organizations almost completely.
“Administration officials,” she writes, “said it was important to give contracts to American corporations… as a way to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that the United States is a ‘liberator’ bringing economic prosperity and democratic institutions to their nation.”
How’s that again? Oh, now it’s clear. The Iraqis, being “simple, ignorant souls”, will presumably have forgotten at that point which foreign power it was that just weeks or days previously had bombed their infrasructure to smithereens. “Relief work,” Becker quotes her sources as telling her, “will begin almost as soon as the first bombs are dropped and the military is confronted with Iraqi civilians in need of food, water, medicine and shelter.”
Alert readers can probably guess the kinds of companies that have been invited to submit bids. Yes, there’s Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root on the list, along with Bechtel and many others of the “usual suspects.”
To add perspective to her story, Becker uses some quotes from Frances Cook, a woman who was previously US Ambassador to Oman and is now a consultant to several Middle Eastern companies. Cook’s been lobbying (why am I not surprised) for Middle Eastern companies to get some of the contracting action.
But actually, the points she makes are fair enough. “They are already screaming in the Middle East– you call us corrupt, look at you giving contracts to American companies and no one else,” she is quoted as saying.
Yes, it does all leave a very nasty taste in the mouth, doesn’t it? First the Bushies get to gratuitously bomb the country to bits. And then, almost immediately, they sweep in as “liberators”, asking for laurel wreaths and a welcome mat because they’re handing out contracts to Halliburton to come and fix the plumbing.
Elision alert! Elision alert! Did anyone hear a swish as one of the Horseman of the Apocalypse rode through there? He was in there somewhere, I swear.
So yes, distasteful. But maybe there’s another way to look at it? Couldn’t this be the ultimate Keynesian scheme? After all, the British economic guru had famously recommended someplace that, given that government spending is such an effective stimulant for the general economy, it might well make sense for the government to hire one set of workers to dig holes in the streets, and another set to come by the next day and fill them in…
Of course, the Bushies would probably rather die than admitting to being Keynesians. John Maynard Keynes– whose theories helped inspire the New Deal and who networked personally to help bring about the creation of the World Bank– advocated economic policies directly contrary to the Bushies’ favored cure-all of tax cuts for the rich…
And the administration is notably not proposing any plans to have these same companies come into US cities and regions and undertake the kinds of large-scale infrastructure-development projects that so much of the country needs…
So could we see this entire war-in-Iraq thing as a big Keynesian dig-and-fill-up-the-holes project?
Nah. On a horrible day like today, even cute humor doesn’t work. War still stinks. It has no redeeming value whatsoever and will only cause further waves of violence to ricochet down through history. Unless, G-d help us all, we can all get a grip and step out of this paradigm of violence and counter-violence.