CHANCE ENCOUNTERS: THEY’VE HIRED PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS.

THIRD DRAFT--Newer and so much better--7/2/06

Happy Fourth of July!


This account has been fictionalized to protect the identity of spies, agents, spooks, and what have you of what Empire spins off of endless mediocrity.



THE LADY AT CLEVELAND PARK


An acquaintance once told me that when sweating after exercise, I should take off my T-shirt before going into an air-conditioned space. I followed his advice on a day a couple of months ago; in my haste, I ripped one lens off my eyeglasses. I searched for an old and imperfect pair and made my way eventually to my optometrist.

On the metro in Cleveland Park, a young woman struck up a conversation with me. She feigned newness to town; she was heading to “Besh-hesda” to help her sister in some health-related field, she said. Being young and not unattractive, I gave her an old professional card. Anything for the promise of reproductive access. When we arrived in “Besh-hesda,” she disappeared. I regretted accepting her overture.

Having hired private investigators for over fifteen years, I could tell later that she fit the type. But it didn’t matter, anyway.


PSEUDO FRIENDS AND PSEUDO ENEMIES

In his entertaining book, an anthropological gem, A Year in Casablanca, Tahir Shah, an Englishman of Afghani descent, is grateful to have left London in part because most of his friends there were “pseudo-friends”–-people who had insisted on befriending him. But these “friendships” had been shallow and ultimately meaningless. In contrast, while his complaints about Morocco were many, he did build a modest and fulfilling friendship with a poor and sick man, in the bidonville (shantytown) near his house. That friendship had more honor and warm reciprocity in it than all the “pseudo friendships” of bleak London.

In my case, in Empire’s capital, since I’ve started putting out this e-newsletter, I’ve developed what I will call “pseudo-enemies,” and have lost at least one pseudo-friend. By publishing the e-newsletter, I became the token Arab to a bunch of pseudo-friends. Since they had no Palestinians around them to wish them away, I became it. The pseudo-enemies are those who have staged chance encounters, eavesdropped on me by sending me a Trojan virus (through Faith), and now have hired private investigators to locate me so that they may stage chance encounters, yet again.

(Once, when a graduate student, I got a job offer in a little known college in Texas. A good friend who is (now, not then) a "high-powered" attorney in a fancy law firm explained it thus, "you'd be their token northener.")

OF NARCISSISM

“NO ONE REALLY KNEW IRAQ”

The most recent article in this newsletter, “Why We Should Leave Iraq,” spoke about an Arab man who appears tons on television. My anger with him was obvious. He had claimed on a television news show that no one really knew Iraq before the invasion--a patent lie. He was one of the academicians who played a role in laying the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq.


Why a lie? Those who grew up in Lebanon knew with absolute certainty that Iraq was a difficult country to govern. Non-uncle Tom Arabs had warned repeatedly, “Iraq is the fiercest of all Arab nations.” No one listened. Or, more precisely, they listened to those on the payroll and to those Arab academicians who tremble at the thought of being denied tenure should they say anything that could be construed as critical of Israel.

The “No one really knew Iraq” man had been studying his region of origin and informing on it for decades. Claiming therefore that no one really knew Iraq smacked of fraud. As a consequence, in “Why We Should Leave Iraq,” I criticized him using harsh words: “little bald man,” narcissistic.” I think I was justified in my anger but, as Buddhism teaches us, compassion should be our path. I have not been compassionate towards any of the right-wing Israel-centric and Israel-obsessed. Thanks to them, the Islamists have achieved victories (in Iraq, in Palestine, in Somalia–and it seems they’re on their way to a victory in Afghanistan, in spite of Secretary Rice’s assurances to the contrary.) These Islamists could not have dreamt of such victories before the aggression against Iraq. Worse, this aggression has created an environment where fires can be lit up all over the region, awaiting U.S. troops to extinguish them. And, we all know, there’s a dearth of these and of Western troops.

A few days preceding the start of the writing of this essay (I started writing on 6/28/06), the “No one really knew Iraq” man was made to stage a chance encounter with me on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Woodley Rd. He was in a small SUV; I was coming from Wisconsin Avenue onto Woodley, walking. His private investigators must’ve phoned him to move forward and make a right on Wisconsin Avenue as I made a left from Wisconsin Avenue onto Woodley Road. (You get it: right, left?)

( I now have another reason to be angry. This article and the one before it had consumed so much of my time that I couldn’t get to the piece I really wanted to write about the future direction of the Arab and Islamic opposition/resistance.)


ON TO WAR, BARKS THE EXTREME RIGHT. BUT, AFTER IRAQ, NO ONE IS LISTENING.


What is startling about the Iraq fiasco is that the populist Judeo-Christian right wants to continue on with mediocre policies. They insist. (I’m distinguishing this right wing from a number of smart conservatives who surrounded the former President Bush.)

For instance, a fellow from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute (AEI), who was given time to make a commentary on a market-oriented show on National Public Radio, developed an argument that Iran was the most important reason for the rise in oil prices.

That‘s another patent lie. At the risk of over-simplifying, and if I were to boil things down to their very essence, I would point to low interest rates as the most important reason for the rise in oil prices. These have fueled a terrific expansion here; and this terrific domestic expansion in turn fueled one in China, our factory. These expansions, by definition, required a lot more oil. That, along with the Iraq war, the insecurity it created, and the rush to speculate by a capital that was hungry for higher returns, drove the prices up to the current level. That–to address the AEI gentleman’s hidden agenda--in turn pumped money into the pockets of oil-rich American rivals--Russia and Iran. Which in turn allowed these two to have aggressive foreign policies. Something similar applies to affluent China, which had been swimming in huge surpluses. (I haven’t checked on China’s reserves in a while–but I suspect they’re probably in the range of a couple of trillions of dollars.)


At the risk once again of over-simplifying, the low interest rates, by fueling an oil-dependent worldwide expansion, enriched rivals and emboldened them. As a result, in the absence of a war tax, the new-found financial power of the rivals had the sorry effect of emaciating U.S. foreign military abilities in that U.S. troops had to face (I suspect) the money of rivals. U.S. troops were therefore made to go into into the field without a scenario that accounted for this possibility. What kind of imperial mandarins are these who, like the AEI genius, do not understand Empire's financial engine? Or try to?

The AEI fellow in essence was calling either for war against Iran or for policies which would be tantamount to war. Comical if it weren’t tragic, since American troops would once again be sent on a mission to fight a conventional war only to be surprised to have to fight a complex guerrilla one, thousands of miles away, with various ethnic/religious groups as allies a day, enemies another. All of this while no American politician dares mention the need to raise taxes to pay for wars, or enact the draft.

(Please don’t nauseate me by talking about counter-insurgency. In my book, this concept reeks of mediocrity. If you want to send U.S. troops anywhere, do politics first and foremost.)


THE HANDLED LEBANESE CHRISTIAN

Neither the “We didn’t really know Iraq” man nor the handled Lebanese Christian are important people–no offense meant. My authorship gives them importance because I feel they should know better, being Arab.

And I have a lot of affection and compassion for the handled Lebanese Christian.

In my first Chance Encounters series, I had described a chance encounter with an actual Israeli agent who met me (chance-encountered me) at the airport of my old vacation haunt. He seemed to be handling a Lebanese Christian cell, made up of Cuban-like expatriates, Lebanese Christians who had lived the civil war and who probably sat around and fumed about Asad, as Cubans about Castro. Having grown up Christian Maronite I can tell you that we lived in fear of Syria closing off its border to Lebanese products. Then the United States and its favored protectorate invited Syria to conquer Christian Mount Lebanon. The rest is history.

One Lebanese Christian man: I see him as an immigrant who has gotten stuck. His frame of reference probably is still Lebanon; but things have changed lots there since he left. This gentleman lived through horrendous times in Lebanon, times when the Lebanese Christians were being defeated and had sought Israel’s help as the American-controlled Army intelligence’s schemes to rein in the Palestinian resistance went awry. (See, “Lebanon; The Idiots Are Back.”)

At any rate, this man was made to stage a chance encounter with me on the corner of Rodman (a street that takes you into the Carlysle Group-owned apartment and condo complex) and Wisconsin Avenue, I (power) walking, and he in his non-metropolitan-area-plated not-recently-minted Japanese luxury car. I later regretted not having said hello to him; but it all went fast. He had squeezed himself behind the middle bar of his car, as if to hide, as if he were embarrassed that he had to do this to a fellow Lebanese Christian.


THE NAIVE ANGLO FRIEND--SORRY !

“That that---( country’s name)----intelligence would have such an interest in monitoring and intimidating you is really flattery,” said a (non-pseudo) friend. “Your newsletter–which you said you put out with the spirit of a graduate student–is being read and maybe they know something you don’t–maybe it has influence.” I nearly laughed. He doesn't know them, I thought. These guys are paranoid; they think everything is a threat. He continued, “I should actually re-consider your offer a few years ago to edit the newsletter.” He mulled it over then said with decisiveness, “Yes, I will re-consider.” I didn’t react lest I scare him away from the idea. I don’t have the money to pay him, but he doesn’t need it. He’s (filthy) rich. And I need an editor badly, since I typically continue to find gaps and mistakes in my prose weeks after I post an article. I’ve reached a point where I’ve stopped reading things I’ve posted knowing that I will find mistakes.


IDEOLOGICAL BOX: ISRAEL

I need not spend any time belaboring the fact that the American Judeo-Christian right has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, miserably. The problem has been and continues to be that the smart ones among these ( that is, the ones who let their ambition get the best of their brain–think Wolfowitz) can’t seem to get out of their ideological boxes and have the courage to state, “We made a huge mistake.” And proceed to help here and in Iraq, to make amends, and to assure that the orphans and the maimed are cared for–-to give a part of their fat paychecks and trust funds to those American and Iraqi families whose existence has been so crushed by their ambitions and by their mediocrity.

When it comes to Israel, their rallying cry, it should be obvious to all that the Arab world and most of the Palestinians have come to terms with its existence, albeit that the Israeli right refuses to come to terms with the existence of the Palestinian nation. Only that the Jewish right’s support for the invasion of Iraq, and its willingness to provide a Jewish cover for the American imperial class and its crusaders, has set the acceptance of Israel back.

The Islamists have used that support as a mobilizing force of the Sunni Arab public. You need only consider the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements of Iran’s president to appreciate the usefulness of the Jewish right to the Islamists. (Ahmadi Nejad’s statements were meant mostly for the Arab Street.) The rallying cry within that street is that the Israelis and the Americans are out to make the Arabs “obedient.” (The word they use is “tatwi3,” as in “ita3ah,” obedience–to make obedient.)


COM'N YOU PEOPLE NOW...EVERYBODY GET TOGETHER, TRY...

“The Israelis and the Palestinians will be at it two hundred years from now,” is a mantra that is all too familiar among Arabs.

But that need not be the case. Those among the Israelis and the Palestinians who have a brain--that is, those who are able to have reproductive access without holding an important position or being sadistic (that’s usually the left)--should realize that one way out of this quagmire is to evolve economic interdependence between the two people, while shedding all the lands of 1967.

Here’s an example. A friend, an Israeli Palestinian, hired an assistant for his aging parents in Israel . He pays the Asian lady $800 per month, room and board included. He puts up with extensive (progressive) controls by the Israeli government of the working conditions of the Asian lady. Eight hundred dollars. For a Palestinian woman, that would be a fortune!

Now a woman like that in the Gulf would make nowhere close to $800 per month. If anything, a couple of years ago, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was negotiating with Vietnam and Cambodia to import help at the measly rate of $70 per month. As to progressive controls–-dream on.

(In Lebanon, an Asian lady brought in to help would be lucky if she made $160, including room and board. Controls over her working conditions do exist but they’re nowhere close to those in Israel.)

Wouldn’t it make sense if the $800 salary went to a Palestinian woman or man? Wouldn’t it be peace-inducing if Israel were in fact paying for the West Bank and Syrian water, seeing in this money an investment in inter-dependence and security?


IDEOLOGICAL BOX: LEBANON

The handled Lebanese Christian gentleman was made to stage a chance encounter with me by his friends. That gentleman, I suspect, has frozen in time. He began in politics as a way to protect the Christians of Lebanon and to fulfill his ambition as a possible leader of that community. (Problem: That’s a community where they all feel they are themselves leaders. Remember: We Semites invented the concept of “savior;” so delusion is our specialty.)

But the Christians had long been defeated, thanks in good part to the United States and Israel, which invited Syria to conquer Mount Lebanon.

I haven’t been to Lebanon in over three years, since my mother had become ill. But I used to go there once a year. What would strike me on these trips was how forgetful people were. You could almost say that they had amnesia: they looked at the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s as if it were an event that had taken place centuries ago. They’ve moved on. The handled gentleman hasn’t. (The very word for “person” is Arabic–-Insan-- has its origin in the verb “to forget”.)

What the Christians in Lebanon need is work and money. The Hariri Sunni have the money and the Shiite have the numbers and an overflow of them are on the government payroll. The Christians have nothing. The Americans’ horses in Lebanon are the Shiite (eventually, especially Berri) and Hariri. The Christians, like the Druze, have become relatively insignificant. And even if America wins in Lebanon, a big if, the Christian gentleman should expect to live a political life that is not central to Lebanon’s fate or future. It’s over for him, politically--no offense meant–-as it is over for so many junior Christian “leaders.”

[Why is Lebanon important to the United States now that the Crater Middle East initiative has met its death in Iraq? Russia is said to be planning to establish a permanent navy base in Tartous in Syria, which will be defended by an advanced missile system that would cover most of Syria.]

There’s a silver lining: the Christians, defeated, have gained something precious from that defeat. They have learned not to place their eggs in one basket. Geagea, the lesser Chritian leader, stands in the camp of Hariri (money),and Aoun (by far the more popular) has a memorandum of understanding with Hizballah (the majority.)

(Aoun, who I had never thought of much when a general, has grown into a seasoned politician who has forced me to respect him. He had turned the Christian street around and onto the path of survival--to the extent the Christians will stay in a Lebanon that has not much of an economy.)

Still, the Christians are impoverished.

When in Lebanon, I would hear countless stories about Christian Lebanese women heading to the gulf to engage in prostitution. That was confirmed numerous times by travelers I’ve met. If the Lebanese gentleman wants to help his community in Lebanon, he would do well to engage in raising money for the Christians there to create employment and honorable living. Allying himself so fully with his friends gets him into a conflict (Israeli-Palestinian) which may not see an end in our life time, and is of no help to his community. When the dust settles, the Christians of Lebanon, and Hariri’s Sunni, would never part with the Shiites of Lebanon. And all would have to accommodate their Palestinian Arab brothers and sisters, like it or not. And it’s highly unlikely, I’d say impossible, that the fast-growing Shiites (they are very fast growing) and the non-Hariri Sunni (think Tripoli and the north, who are the majority) would come to terms with an Israel that does not recognize a Palestinian state.

Aoun seems to have understood this. He also has understood that the Shiite, including Hizballah, a legitimate Lebanese party that is (too) an extension of Iranian foreign policy, never have turned their guns onto the Christian populace.

GIVE ME CARGO!

I don’t see myself as sectarian or into minorities in the Middle East. Minorities stay or go based mostly on economics, not persecution. There’s compelling historical evidence on that. And Lebanon doesn’t have the economic opportunities of yesteryears. Hence the importance of cargo from the diaspora.

To illustrate: An old Lebanese Christian man once reminded me that in the 19th century the Christians of Lebanon, whose population was increasing, were able to buy the lands owned by the Druze, whose numbers were decreasing, thanks to money sent to them by the Christians of Europe, through the Church. Now it’s the turn for the Shiite and the Hariri Sunni to buy the land owned by the shrinking Christians. (I suspect much of the purchased lands now, even when purchased in the names of Christians, really belong to Gulf Arabs.)

So, you see, the Christians have nowhere to go in a non-economy but to the societies of the tax-base in the West. No one is sending the Christians money. Their small country is in debt to the tune of nearly $36 billion dollars. Their only option is to leave. I can see it in my own family and close friends. Even those who had resisted leaving now are, or are sending away their children.

(I’ve always maintained that the Lebanese historically are a generation away from emigrating to the West.)

Talking in a way that the handled gentleman would understand: Taking on Israel’s cause (or Syria’s) ain’t good for nothing as far as the Lebanese Christians are concerned. Hizballah and the Shiite will burn Lebanon once again before they are made to split from Syria, and the handled man's relatives will flood him here as refugees. The Christians' best strategy is to lay low and wait it out.

Those who stay in Lebanon need to be Arab all the way, if only to avoid alienation and false hopes of an American or European rescue. The American people have been burnt by Iraq and the lies which led to it; and the Europeans--oh well, they're concerned about their pension plans.

And there's tons of good to being Arab. The gentleman should remember that throughout the Lebanese civil war, even after a Christian leader's men committed an unspekable massacre against Muslims and Palestinians (Black Saturday), there was not one single retaliatory act in the entire Arab World. Arabs looked at the massacre as yet another sign of brothers going insane. So there's a lot to say about the magnanimity of Arabs--ash-shahamah. Much more than can be said about his friends and their allies within friendly Arab intelligence services (think......) who spend their time collecting data on Tony Khater!

And those Lebanese who are here need to open restaurants and make oodles of money, or head to law school or medical school to preserve their independence and dignity.

Nor is harassing Tony Khater.

Such will not bring cargo to the Christians of Lebanon, or make them more secure. If it helps the Lebanese Christian gentleman’s career, I’d be glad to provide him with all the “intelligence” he needs to further his career with his friends. I can tell him a lot about my exciting life: my forever costly teeth, my expensive but super-competent dentist (we all love our dentists, don’t we?), my primary care physician (who I’ve never met; if anything, I'm given a nurse-practitioner), my sex fantasies (though his sponsors already know lots about that from the Trojan virus their agent Faith sent me), my trips to the doctors with my dad to interpret, my thoughts about my mother and how solid and balanced her mind was, and how loving of the poor she was (empathy which narcissists will never understand), how she loved "keeping Up Appearances" while I interpreted for her, the measly amount of money in my pension plan (Archie, a colleague, asked me not to worry about that; he opened the obituaries page in the Post, showed me all the dead people and commented, “they all had pension plans,”) my food preferences ( I claim to be a vegetarian, yet I find myself eating meat when I’m a guest or a host), ...you name it, so that his friends would have the fullest file possible.

I’m even willing to photocopy my ass for them, so they can see themselves, mirror-like.


That really should help them in their ceaseless effort to make obedient the Palestinians! Two hundred years!

WHY WE SHOULD LEAVE IRAQ

SIXTH DRAFT


"[Karl] Marx will declare that wartime patriotism is the ideological superstructure of the imperialist class interest, whereas [Sigmund] Freud will detect an element of sadism in the enthusiasm of the individual wartime volunteer."

Sigfried Bernfeld, as cited in Michael Schneider, Neurosis and Civilization (1975).


"Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his own conscioulsy desired end....But... we have seen that the many individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those intended--often quite the opposite.

Friedrich Engels, Selected Works.


"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circustances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from the names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language. [emphasis added.]

Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Note: The three quotations above have been adapted from Richard Lichtman, The Production of Desire, The Integration of Ppsychoanalysis and Marxist Theory (New York, The Free Press, 1982.)


BACKGROUND

The recent debate in Congress about whether to have a timetable for leaving Iraq is remiss. It fits into the string of mediocre strategies and tactics which began when the Bush Administration decided to invade, and has continued ever since. Strategic blindness rules the day in Washington, D.C.

It’s as if all now subscribe to the view, expounded by a man on a television news talk show a couple of months ago, a so-called neo-conservative, an “3Arab” says he in his endless television appearances: That no one really knew Iraq. Hence the invasion? Hell!

The debate in Congress smacks of similar dishonesty, of fraud. Thousands of dead and wounded later, American and Iraqi, and a barbaric devastation and dismantlement of a defenseless country that meant us no harm–-and yet Congress is concerned about the mid-term elections! The television man is incapable of empathy or courage. So is Congress.

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6/27/06

[NOTE: CHANCE ENCOUNTERS, YET AGAIN! I've edited out adjectives about the television man, the "3Arab," because I felt bad afterwards. There's quite a lot of anger in me about sending American troops to yet another adventure--the first was Lebanon in the early 1980s--without proper assessment. This one tops the Lebanon adventure by scores, and has resulted in the dismantlement and destruction of an Arab country.

The television man and another Lebanese right-wing Israel-centric fellow separately have staged chance encounters with me near my place. They must have a radar that tells them when I'm out and at what corners of what streets they can find me, walking or jogging. :)

If they think that I'd be intimidated by these encounters, they should think again. I've edited out the adjectives more because I felt bad about my harshness, albeit deserved, than because of their silly intimidation tactics, sponsored of course by an organized group or a foreign power--they only know. For all: This newsletter is staunchly independent and will remain so. So much so that I avoid accepting invitations to events sponsored by Arab embassies. For instance, I went once to an Egytian embassy event and felt awful afterwards for being critical of Egypt. Since then, I avoid all such events.]

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Nearly all in Washington D.C. are tied to the expansive military-industrial-right-wing-think-tank-Uncle-Tom-protectorates-complex–-the infamous military-industrial complex, expanded (the Complex). They all blabber away at the same mantra: To leave Iraq is to see the terrorists win.

Let’s play with this logic. Let’s put it the SaudiPolitics’ way: To say that we will stay in Iraq to deny a victory to the terrorists is to say that the over 300 million Arab Sunni who (in effect) are resisting America’s occupation of Iraq are in the moral wrong. It’s to say that it is wrong to resist foreign occupation; that those who do, in effect 300 million of them, all are terrorists.

Underlying this pathological self-righteousness is the secret wish that once we achieve this or that one goal (e.g., arrest the Iraqi President, kill Zarqawi, clean up Falloujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, Baghdad, change the government in Iran, and so on)–-that it’ll all be over. It won’t. I’ll explain later. (Actually, it could get much worse.)

What gave (and continues to give) strength to the Bush Administration Iraqi policies is the support he had received (and continues to) from liberals These saw in this President a chance to civilize Arabs, and make life easier for Israel (not the other way around!); and Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove saw in the liberals a chance to steal away a good part of the Jewish community. These liberals have given Mr. Bush terrific cover and justification for his Iraqi policies.

In contrast, Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese (Kevin is running for the U.S. Senate in Maryland on an anti-war platform) recently told this writer that 52% of Maryland Republicans are against the war. Imagine: Republicans are against the war, and a (once) progressive friend is for it. Go figure.

And go Kevin!

CLARIFICATIONS

What follows is an account of the dynamics of Iraqi politics as these relate to the American occupation. The focus by necessity is a narrow one. This newsletter had in the past addressed other facets of the American invasion. Suffice it to say here that Iraq has revealed that a unipolar world does not bestow absolute power on the United States.

Moreover, it would belittle the intelligence of Russian and Chinese policy-makers for us to think that Iraq had not provided them an opportunity to pass untraceable money to this or that faction in the Iraqi insurgency, directly or through Syria, Iran and others. I would’ve if I were they. Certainly they are aware that the Iraqi experience should define the application of American power for decades to come. Not to mention controlling China by controlling its oil sources. (It's estimated that, by the year 2015, China would be importing 70% of its oil from the Middle East.)

Better stop the U.S. in Iraq before having to fight it off nearer to home.

Argument: The U.S. needs to stay in Iraq to balance Iranian power.

Iran and all in the world have learned not to fight the United States conventionally. They use a mix of politics and unconventional warfare, the Achilles' heel of the technologically-minded and domestically-constrained United States. When the U.S. thinks of unconventional warfare, it thinks of counter-insurgency, which is the reactionary way of ignoring politics.

In short, the U.S. can balance Iranian power conventionally from Qatar. As for Iraq, the United States already has lost the war. It’s shot itself in the foot way too many times. And it's incapable of flexibility. For now, it should watch from Qatar and decide on what factions in Iraq, if any, to support.

WHY WE SHOULD LEAVE

THAT’S NOT THE WAY TO THINK

The administration , the Congress, and the Complex cling to a non-dynamic take on events. These entities, driven by so many hidden interests and therefore un-objective and biased, take one photo shot of the events, then another months later, then another weeks later. The thread that ties these still photos is the so-called war on terrorism. But harping on the terrorist rubric, while conceivably helpful in mobilizing the American public for the long haul, has the sorry disadvantage of warping the thinking of the decision-makers themselves and that of the troops and their commanders in the field.

For even such obvious terror acts as the gruesome murder of humanitarian workers has a political purpose; and it helps little not to see that purpose. When the Iraqi resistance (face it, please: it's a "resistance!") murders (in cold blood) the worker of a humanitarian organization, it is denying the occupier a humanitarian cover, the occupier’s ruse to legitimize its naked aggression. It could, couldn’t it, offer the humanitarian worker the option of becoming a Muslim and avoiding death. But it doesn’t.

Having denied the occupier the humanitarian cover for its imperial grab, the Iraqi resistance has forced it into the Abu Ghraib and Haditha boxes. Accordingly, it has portrayed it as a sadistic torturer and a cold-blooded murderer of innocent civilians to the 300 million supporters of the resistance in the Arab world, and to the larger populace in the Islamic world.

THE GOAL OF THE SUNNI RESISTANCE

The resistance to America’s occupation of Iraq has been and still is mostly (not fully) Arab Sunni. Its methods include such acts as suicide bombings against Shiite civilians and all police and national guard recruits, Shiite and others. These bombings have a well-measured purpose: To see the American puppet state fail.

The death of Shiite civilians and the retaliation by Shiite militias against Arab Sunni civilians, in the end show a puppet state that is unable to provide the most basic of services: security. By assuring the state’s failure, the country’s economy remains weak, unemployment high, and legitimacy for the state absent. Accordingly, the occupier’s expenses remain exhorbitant, leading to a taxpayers’ revolt.

Why would the Arab Sunni want to see the American puppet state fail?

For one, that state is led by men who were (and, some maintain, still are) Iran’s agents, now double-agents. More importantly, the American puppet state has nothing to offer the Sunni, since it possesses no uniting and inclusive ideology. The puppet state is built of the promise of security. Which in itself offers an opportunity: You eat away at security, the very raison d’etre of the puppet state, and you have a winner. There’s little to lose, since the puppet state is not even nationalistic. It’s a puppet. It doesn’t have the pan-Arab secular (and therefore inclusive) underpinnings which gave its predecessor quite a lot of legitimacy.

When Mr. Bush defeated the secular and pan-Arab Baath, he took away any reason for the Iraqis to unite willingly. What was left was brute force: One group had to subdue the other, not persuade. To persuade, you need a common purpose. With the occupation and its machinations, there’s none. (Some Arab observers insist that the U.S. and allied Arab agents explode car bombs in Sunni neighborhoods as punishment after guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops. This ends up emptying into the Sunni goal of assuring the failure of the occupier's very puppet state.)

(My pessimism about Iraq is not permanent. The Iraqis sooner or later will pick up the pieces--maybe thirty to fifty years from today.)

What could the Arab Sunni have in common with the Arab Shiite under the American umbrella? Nothing.

Worse, seen from the Sunni perspective, America is not an unbiased occupier. This occupier sponsors a protectorate in a relentless war against Arab Sunni brethren in Israel/Palestine, an occupier who has a strategic alliance with the tormenter of the Palestinian Sunni Arabs.

As a consequence, U.S. troops die.

The same occupier bolsters Arab governments which members are of the most corrupt on the face of this planet, relentless in their greed and theft of their people's resources. These American puppet governments are more-or-less able to control their “Arab street” in normal times, especially when they have the money. In troubled times, these puppet governments siphon their opposition to the trouble spot du jour (Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq) and insulate themselves from the regional disturbance–a win-win situation.

As a consequence, U.S. troops die.

(Dear fellow capitalists: Don’t let my prose make you look for a foreign scapegoat. Using a metaphor you will understand: the buck stops at the White House.)

(The best reporting on the Arab street-in-turmoil is coming from Anthony Shedid, as was the very best reporting on Iraq. Declaration of conflict: Mr. Shedid’s ancestors hail from my town of birth in Lebanon.)

Back to Iraq:

While it is true that many Sunni were unhappy with the methods of the Jordanian Zarqawi, their unhappiness hardly separated them from the overall strategy of wanting the American puppet state to fail, including the firing up of a civil war by killing civilians. To put it bluntly, the Arab Sunni were upset with Zarqawi because he sent suicide bombers against Arab Sunni recruits (e.g., in Tikrit), not because he was murdering Arab Shiite.

(Iran, Jordan and Syria (therefore Russia) have now ganged up on the takfiris--the Zarqawi/bin Laden people, while the U.S. is lending support and money to a version of the same people in Syria--the Muslim Brothers. The U.S. now has placed these on the payroll. Yes Virginia, the United States has placed al Qaeda double agents on te payroll! Don't hold your breath thinking that the regional pressure on the takfiris will translate into calm and peace in Iraq. See the section below on the Shiites. One insurgency stops; the other will be lit up.)


WHAT ABOUT THE SHIITE?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Arab Sunni quiet down or are totally defeated. What would be next?

By way of background, you should be aware that the Bush Administration has bought out the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Dawa. I don’t know how much this purchase of Iran’s agents had cost the American taxpayer. I suspect it’s in the billions. [Note to self: convert to Shiism, start a group in Iran, then get bought out by the Bush Administration for a couple of cool billions; the U.S. taxpayer is a sucker. Tell her/him it’s for fighting terrorism.]

But I doubt very much that these two or three parties (Dawa is more than one faction) have shed the thousands of Iranian agents within their ranks. After all, these parties were reared in Iran. Moron-like, I suspect that the American taxpayer is very likely paying the salaries of hundreds if not thousands of Iranian agents within the ranks of SCIRI and Dawa.

We also should be clear that Iran–-Islamic or non–-has clear and pressing interests in Iraq, foremost among which is assuring that the United States does not use Iraq as a base in its eventual military assault on Iran, and that Iraq remain weak and divided, lest it once again rises to balance Iranian power. Such is the thinking of the Iranians.

Having witnessed the U.S. buy out SCIRI and Dawa, Iran added its support to the Mahdi Army--to Muqtadha as-Sadr. This newsletter senses that Muqtadha is an Arab nationalist at heart. (It’s only a sense.) Therefore, he could split from Iran should the circumstances (they’re quite specific) warrant it. (The U.S., through Jordan, had tried to buy out Muqtadha, but failed.)

The small Islamic Fadila Party seems to be close to the Mahdi Army; and both are anti-American. I don’t know much about Fadila except that recently, after U.S. troops swooped down from Baghdad to arrest the chairman of the council of the province of Karbala, 3Aqil Sale7 al-Zubaidi, a Fadila leader, on suspicion of having been involved in attacks against them, Sadr men demonstrated in protest. Fadila strikes me as an Iranian creation. Fadila's very name smacks of an intelligence front. But I’m not confident of this. In reaching this conclusion, I'm inspired by the Syrian invasion of Lebanon during that country's civil war, and invasion that had America's (and therefore Israel's) blessing.

Theoretically, should the Arab Sunni be subdued, the burden of forcing the Americans out should fall to the Mahdi Army.

Should the Mahdi Army heighten its war pitch against the American occupier, it should expect the Shiite young to flood its ranks. The more it fights the Americans, the more popular it would become, even if it loses each and every “battle.” SCIRI and Dawa could ill-afford to stand by, idle, while the Shiite young flock to Mahdi. Therefore, at a minimum, Mahdi’s war with the Americans should tilt the intra-Shia debate in favor of total and absolute American withdrawal from Iraq. No bases; no monstrous embassy... Such would be the more likely dynamic within the Shiite camp.

So, in essence, the United States can withdraw now or it will be forced to withdraw later. Lose more troops and money by delaying the inevitable; or lose less by taking the initiative.

The argument that withdrawing now would leave Iraq in a state of a much worse civil war is a non-starter. A much worse civil war will occur now if the U.S. withdraws, and it will occur later when the U.S. is forced to withdraw. Only if the United States spends $100 billion per year on buying out everyone in Iraq–pure cash in the pockets of all, year after year-- would a civil war remain tame after the U.S. withdraws.


THE KURDS

Some believe that the United States can head north for bases, and watch the civil war from the mountains. But it’ll have to locate itself really deep inside those mountains, as far north as possible, since Kirkuk and its surroundings will have enough Arabs–-Sunni and Shiite-–to disturb U.S. presence. The relative peace we see in the north is in good part related to Iranian-Turkish coordination against the Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK), the foremost formenter of civil war inside Turkey.

But, should the U.S. move north, we should expect Iranian and other money to flow to the PKK, resulting in a re-heating of the civil war inside Turkey. Which in turn should place pressure on the Kurdistan Patriotic Union (Talabani) and especially on the Kurdistan Democratic Party (Barazani) to rush to the assistance of their Turkish brethren.

U.S. troops, once again, should find themselves in the midst of chaotic goal-less warfare.

CONCLUSION

Viewed dynamically, and because of its physical presence in Iraq and its war by proxy on the Palestinians, the United States has no reliable allies left within Iraq. The secular and modernist Iraqis, the once potential natural allies to the U.S. and Europe, are long gone thanks to Mr. Bush and the extremist Judeo-Christian right-wing ayatollahs around him and their liberal adorers--the Thomas Friedmans.


Neither the Iraqi Sunni (now Islamists) nor the Shiite (now theocratic) for the foreseeable future offer the U.S. the prospect of long-term alliances. And Turkey could not bargain away its territorial integrity by cooperating too closely with the United States in Kurdish northern Iraq. (Turkey's relations with the United States are cool. Now is the first time in fifty years that there are no pending arms contracts between the two.)

Time to bring in the United Nations to clean up after Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld. U.N. troops could not halt the drive towards a more vicious civil war; but neither can U.S. troops. Only that U.N. troops and not U.S. troops would be the target for the insurgents, and I have a feeling they’d be much cheaper.

AMERICA’S ROAD TO NOWHERE IN THAT CRATER MIDDLE EAST

(What I'm working on: Whither the Arab Resistance/Opposition?) 6/15/06.


SECOND DRAFT

SAUDI ARABIA NEGOTIATES WITH ISRAEL...THROUGH MUBARAK;
THE UNITED STATES TRIES AT AN ARAB-ISRAELI ANTI-IRAN FRONT.

Now: Why would Saudi King Abdallah visit with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak? The Egyptian government, after all, is eminently insignificant. It carries no weight whatsoever–not strategically, not economically, not culturally. It’s an imperial construct imposed on tens of millions of Egyptians to be servile to Empire’s favorite protectorate.

So why would King Abdallah, old but seemingly healthy, go through the inconvenience?

To cut to the chase: The Egyptian government’s only source of influence is its cozy (servile, really) relationship with Israel. It serves it and the United States, no questions asked. Mubarak wants to assure the succession of his son to the presidency; the U.S. knows that. The U.S. carries the card of reforms; Mubarak knows that. If Mubarak fails to serve Israel and the U.S., the latter would bring up the issue of democratic reforms (or, more precisely, lack thereof) in Egypt. Jamal the son as a consequence would lose his chance at becoming President. And it’s unclear whether an Egyptian Supreme Court can make him one. Case closed.

(The way the U.S. “brings up” the issue of reform is by making payments to opposition groups, and restricting payments to the state.)

So why would King Abdallah, who represents a state which yearly income is about $175 billion, visit a President who represents a state that is nearly starving, but for America’s yearly donation of two billion dollars for services to Israel? Humorously, even at that, the Egyptian vassal state is a failure--a good thing for the Palestinian national movement.

The answer: King Abdallah is using President Mubarak to negotiate with Israel–to renew his 2002 peace proposal, when Crown Prince. This had been a courageous peace offensive, truly. And a smart one, since nothing short of the return of all 1967 lands and reparations would pacify the Palestinian national movement. In other words, the Saudis cannot (and should not) negotiate for the Palestinians. They can only mediate; and here, the King had done his job by giving an Arab context to the negotiations. That’s all he could and can do.

The Israelis of course had ignored that initiative, at the height of their benefactor’s arrogance, prior to that benefactor’s abject failure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Besides, tension and wars have been good to the Israelis. How else have a strategic alliance with the U.S., feed onto Empire’s huge military-industrial complex, even become part of it? It’s America’s first-rate cargo to its favored protectorate.

There were other reasons for King Abdallah’s visit, but I don’t think they were central. For one, he rightfully should be concerned about Egypt and Jordan passing on weapons (with Israel’s blessing, of course) to Mr. Abbas’s Presidential Guard, in preparation for a Palestinian civil war. This civil war should carry true dangers to those fueling it--Jordanians, Egyptians, and Israelis. The King’s advisors should know, shouldn’t they, that a Palestinian civil war likely would hurt those wishing for it. More importantly to the Saudis, this civil war should heighten the pitch of anti-American sentiment among the Saudi and wider Arab and Islamic public. Unavoidably, that civil war and the blood it'd spill will be blamed on the Americans first, the Israelis second. Not to mention that the civil war should throw all public–Arab and Islamic–into the arms of the Islamic Republic.

His visit, in short, mainly was to negotiate with Israel, through one of that country’s Arab agents, so to speak, Mr. Mubarak, and to please the Americans. The visit fits into a inane American policy to unite Arabs and Israelis (without a Palestinian state and reparations to the refugees and to Lebanon) against the Iranians. Like it stands a chance! Here again, as in Lebanon, things might roll out of control for the United States in the region; and it doesn’t have the troops to remedy the situation.

Here’s a reality-based fictional (and humorous?) account of the conversation that took place between the Saudi King and the Egyptian President.

SHARM AL-SHAYKH: THE REALITY-BASED FICTIONAL ACCOUNT

King Abdallah: Mr. President, you look like two-billion dollars in this shining aluminum-like suit!

President Mubarak: You’re too kind, king Abdallah. I couldn’t have afforded it without your generosity.

King Abdallah: All comes from God’s generosity. He made us family, Mr. President. (He pauses.) How is your family, Mr. President?

President Mubarak: The wife is running the country, may God bless her, and my son Jamal is making oodles of money with his friends, monopolizing all there is that makes money in Egypt. He did manage to take off to Washington on a secret mission and did convince the Americans to let him rule the country so that his fortune would eventually top 100 million dollars–a moral obligation, really.

King Abdallah: One hundred billion is quite a fortune, I admit.

An aide to the King approaches him and whispers into his ear.

President Mubarak: No, no: $100 million, not billion!

King Abdallah looks at his entourage and they all smile politely at President Mubarak.

President Mubarak: How’s your family? May God protect them.

King Abdallah: Thank you, Mr. President. Frankly, there’s so many of them I’ve lost track. I don’t keep up anymore. It’s embarrassing. They bring me a grand son or a great grand daughter and I have no clue who their parents are. I give them a couple of hundred million each, to get them started in life. I’m thankful for God’s generosity.

President Mubarak: God be great. So those Americans–they want to see us together.

King Abdallah: Yes they do. They’ve tired me out. Nothing satisfies them but total imperial control. Oops.

President Mubarak: No worry, King Abdallah. You’re among family. Nothing is being taped here. I’m having my problems with them, too, especially that incompetent bitch. At least you don’t rely on them financially and for wheat.

King Abdallah: Still. You know they have so much dirt on our spoiled princes they can make life hell for us. And we have no men left in our government. Did you read that article by Tony Khater and Zein al-Irban about the absence of Saudi manhood ? At any rate, the Americans want to turn us all into servants of their strategic ally Israel. So, feel free to tell Olmert that the 2002 peace initiative is still in effect.

President Mubarak: I will.

King Abdallah: Do you think he’ll bite?

President Mubarak: No he won’t. He’ll act as if he is. He already had been to Washington, where that good-for-nothing Khater lives. Olmert got Bush’s approval to go ahead with a unilateral withdrawal. But I’ll go through the motions, anyway, if only to secure the presideny to my son.

King Abdallah: But my nephew the ambassador tells me that Olmert will have to try first with the Palestinians.

President Mubarak: He will do that, but he will make sure nothing works out with them. Our cousins the Israelis are very good at that. They want to steal yet more Palestinian land and that’s gonna fail President Abbas. I’ll let you hear our palace advisor’s prognosis.

Dr. Mahmoud Muhammad al-Ahmad al-Tizi: Your honors. When American cargo arrives in Balestine, Bresident Abbas will do better–until the Israelis refuse to withdraw fully from all of the occupied territories. The Islamist will then make a come-back.

Dr. Amir Mahmoud Khaled zou'l Ra'y al-Wa7id (Saudi adviser): Thank God for Iran. That country is our only hope to get this thing settled since none of us has the army or the popular appeal to wage unconventional warfare to balance Israel’s arsenal

King Abdallah: Stop, Dr. Amir, I beseech you. The Egyptian armed forces are the pride of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

They all look at each other, stupefied. Then President Mubarak breaks into laughter and, contagiously, they all laugh uncontrollably.

President Mubarak: Like, like, like, like....(still laughing) our troops are as good as yours!

King Abdallah is now in tears. His nurse approaches him and takes his pulse. President Mubarak continues: That boy Ahmadi-Nejad is more popular among the Arab Sunnis than Mu’awiyah (may God bless his soul) ever was.

King Abdallah: Yes he is. Seriously now, the Americans want us to prepare for a drawn out conflict with the Iranians. All the money floating in the Gulf will end up in their pockets. Now that they have lost $320 billion, and hundreds of billions to come, they’ll expect us to pay for their war with Iran. Darn it. I should’ve opposed that war.

President Mubarak: It’s neither here not there for us, King Abdallah. We have no money anyway. We live on wheat and Tu3miyyah (falafel); we haven’t savored meat in decades.

King Abdallah gives him the look.

President Mubarak: Oh well, I meant the Egyptian people, not the Mubarak family and their friends. We eat meat daily. The Islamists do too; they have some money from Iran. But not much.

King Abdallah: Giving you trouble?

President Mubarak: Nah. They’re busy converting Copts.

They both laugh. President Mubarak continues: “Yeah; they’re not issue-oriented or realistic. A Copt teenager converts to Islam and they are thrilled. That keeps them off my back, they and their loud demands for reform, redistribution of wealth, my servility to the Israelis, what have you.”

King Abdallah looks at his advisers and says, “Maybe we need to import a few Copt teenagers into the Kingdom.” The adviser hurriedly take notes.