http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=12606

14-03-2005

The meaning of war: A heterodox perspective

James Petras

Rebelión

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If the imperial state itself was divided and some sectors were not convinced of the need to go to war, which group was able to overcome that resistance, by-pass established intelligence channels (and create its own circuit), fabricate its own “intelligence and successfully lead the US to war? If war was not promoted by and in the interests of the US oil companies, and contrary to military doctrine of fighting two wars simultaneously, in whose geo-political interests was the war?

The War and the Israel-Zionist Hypothesis

The hypothesis which most fits the data is the Israel hypothesis – specifically that the principal architects and theoreticians of US world supremacy and the principal promoters of sequential wars, particularly in the Middle East, were influential Zionists in the top echelons of the Pentagon, National Security Council and in well-connected research centers “advising” the government while acting on behalf of the expansionist interests of the State of Israel.

The key author of the strategic doctrine of undisputed US world power was Wolfowitz, back in the first Bush Administration (1991). He joined with other influential Zionists like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and a host of pro-Israel extremists to prepare a strategy paper for the Israeli state (1996) in which the Palestinians were to be physically driven from all of Palestine and Israel would become the regional power in the Middle East. Both Feith and Wolfowitz, early in their public careers were accused and chastised for turning US government documents over to the Israeli government. For at least twenty years they have been actively collaborating over Israeli policy and, in and out of government, they have worked intimately with Israeli officials in the United States and Israel.

The Zionist influentials, even before securing high positions in the Pentagon and State Department, were strong proponents of US military attacks against Israel’s Middle East adversaries, which included Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Iraq. Their militarist advocacy was independent of how such wars would affect US oil interests, regional stability, relations with Europe, the Muslim countries or the rest of the world. The Pentagon Zionists were among the first to link Iraq with the events of 9/11 in an attempt to manipulate US public anger against the secular Iraqi state. They were responsible for fabricating the story that Iraq was importing uranium from Niger for the purposes of developing nuclear weapons. Wolfowitz admitted that he promoted the false pretext that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction to create a “consensus” to go to war – and every major Zionist writer and ‘expert’ pushed the same line.

The principal pro-Israeli lobby in the US, AIPEC, worked intensely and closely with the State of Israel, and the key Zionists in the Pentagon and their advisory groups in pushing for the US invasion of Iraq. Major Jewish organizations and influential propagandists in the mass media promoted the war, demonizing Iraq and fabricating stories of imminent threats.

The only major beneficiary of the US war in Iraq is the State of Israel: The war destroyed a major supporter of the Palestinian Intifada and Israel got a free hand in its terror and territorial colonization Palestinian land.

The US, isolated from almost all the major European powers and Islamic countries, because of its pro-Israel agenda, took on the pariah status of the Israeli clerical colonial regime. All the predictions and assumptions of the pro-war, anti-Arab Zionists were proven false. The Iraqi Arabs did not submit to the US occupation – they formed a potent resistance which engages the US in an increasingly prolonged war of attrition. The US intervention did not secure an oil monopoly; it has jeopardized its supply of oil in the Middle East by intensifying instability in Saudi Arabia. The war has soured US oil dealings in the Caucuses and resulted in speculative oil price increases, increasing the US trade deficit. Equally significant while the US is immersed in the Iraq War, China, India and Japan secure strategic oil and gas contracts in Asia and Latin America.

The Zionists were wrong in envisioning that the US would proceed to a series of successful wars with Israel’s other enemies in the Middle East – Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The Iraq invasion has tied down the vast majority of US active ground troops in a losing war with high casualties, thus at least, temporarily limiting its capacity to start new wars on behalf of the Empire or Israel. This has not prevented the Pentagon Zionists and their AIPEC allies from pushing for a new military attack on Iran and Syria.

Apart from England, Israel has been the major supporter and ally in the US conquest of Iraq for good reason: They are the principle beneficiaries.

The Pentagon Zionists and their zealous ideological allies have weakened the US economy by widening the trade deficit (via higher oil prices) and increasing the budget deficit (because of war spending). Israel has not suffered at all -- on the contrary military sales to the US increased as well as revenues from the Pentagon for military advisory and training, missions to Iraq and elsewhere.

The US war in Iraq has several particularities as well as common characteristics with other wars. In the first place it demonstrates how a highly organized, ideologically coherent, financially powerful minority with highly placed co-thinkers in the top policy-making institutions of the imperial state can twist policy to suit the needs of a foreign power over and against established economic interests. Secondly the decisions about imperialist wars, though they usually serve the long-term interests of the dominant sectors of the capitalist class, are “made” by politicians, who have their own agendas, ideological and political loyalties which may or may not benefit (or prejudice) the ruling class.

The war in Iraq is a clear case in which the loyalties of the key architects of the war were distinct from those of the ruling class, who were barely taken into account, let alone consulted. The ruling ideology of the architects of war was ‘Israel First, Last and Always’. To cover the Israel-centered war plans, the Zionists fabricated a series of “threats” to US interests which were made to parallel those faced by Israel: threats of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and Muslim fundamentalism. Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate literature circulated in the mass media, in influential journals and talk shows as an army of Zionists ideologues went into an ideological frenzy – infecting the US body politic – and setting off a secondary wave of vituperative froth from fundamentalist Christians, neo-conservative allies and liberal congress-people.

The generalized attack by the Zionists against Arab states and people was directed toward the strategic goal of extending Israeli domination beyond Palestine (“Greater Israel”) not through direct colonization but via a series of client regimes beholden to the US – a US whose major foreign policy institutions would be subject to Zionist influence. The ideological formulae adopted to promote US-Israel dominance in the Arab world was “A Middle East Common Market” based on a campaign to “democratize the region”. Both formulae served as the ideological basis for permanent war in the Middle East, the installment of dual purpose puppet regimes willing to serve both US energy interests and Israel’s market penetration.

The Zionist ideologues’ manipulation of “free market” and “democratic” rhetoric resonated widely among liberal and conservative imperialists, even as the US imperial state and Israel was denying Iraqi and Palestinians their elementary democratic rights and domestic markets. The tactics of the influential Zionists and their extensive networks in the US were directed at fusing Israeli expansionist interests with US imperialist goals, in order to legitimate their pursuit of Israeli state policies – a position echoed by President-elect Bush.

In the real world however, as the US continued to suffer heavy casualties in Iraq and the war debt grew by billions of dollars a day, and as its ‘coalition partners’ abandoned the war, the Zionist influentials inside and outside of the government intensified their pressure on the US to escalate its troop commitments in Iraq and to engage in new Middle East wars. The acid test of Zionist loyalties to Israeli interests is found in the fact that they pursued the war policy even as it weakened the US strategic global position, heightened discontent in the military and in elite civilian circles and increased the probability of an economic crisis resulting from the war deficits and weakening dollar. The Zionists in power are so embedded in the Israeli matrix, that they are totally impervious to the effects which their policies have on the US Empire, domestic economy or civil society.

In effect the US imperial attack of Iraq can be understood as a surrogate war for a regional power, designed and executed by influential policy-makers whose primary allegiance is to defend the interests of the regional power. The Zionist zealots have incorporated the same pathological style of mass paranoid politics prevalent in Israel to the US: the politics of permanent terrorist threats, of pervasive fear, of a hostile world, of unreliable allies… The Zionist zealots have led the ideological charge poisoning relations with France and other European countries which fail to respond favorable to the bloody repression of occupied peoples. No policy group has done more to weaken the sustainability of the US Empire than the Zionist zealots in government and the massive well-financed pro-Israel networks through the US. The Congress, the Executive branch, state and local governments, and national and local media have all come under the influence of the Jewish “lobby’s” pro-Israel agenda to the point that none or few dare to criticize Israel or its US representatives.

The overweening power of the pro-Israel power configuration has inevitable provoked opposition – mainly from non-elected officials. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is preparing to indict several high official from AIPEC, the most powerful representative of Israel’s interests in the US, for spying on the US for Israel. Almost all the major Jewish organizations are preparing to defend AIPEC and its practice of twisting US policy toward the “Israel First” agenda. By early 2005, it was clear that the Zionist power structure had paralyzed the investigation. Numerous retired military and CIA officials have denounced Zionist power in designing and promoting the interests of Israel over US imperial interests. Meantime the Zionists along with the neo-conservatives successfully purged or “neutralized” independent analysts in the CIA, Defense and State Department who questioned the doctrine of sequential wars against Israel’s adversaries in the Middle East. The Second Bush administration is completely controlled by the neo-conservative-Zionist extremists.

The conventional wisdom which perceives world imperial powers dictating policy to lesser regional powers clearly fails to deal with the US Middle East Wars. The reason why this common sense notion is inadequate is because it fails to deal with a series of unique (at least in modern history) phenomena affecting the policy-making structure of the US Empire – the active role of a privileged and influential minority deeply embedded in the decision-making structure and whose primary loyalty is to another state. It is as if the State of Israel has ‘colonized’ the main spheres of political power in the imperial state. These ‘colons’ however are not exactly transplants or emigrants from their “mother country”. Rather they have mostly grown up and have been educated in the imperial center, they have pursued lucrative careers in the US and have, in most instances, been strong supporters of US imperial expansion and militarism. They have risen to and influenced the highest spheres of political power. They have not been discriminated against, nor have they suffered any economic, social or political exclusion. They have not been marginalized - they are integrated in the centers of power. Yet they have set themselves apart from the rest of the US citizens and conceive of themselves as having a special mission -- of being first Jews who unconditionally support the State of Israel and all of its international projections of power. How can we explain this irrational embrace of a militarist state by a set of individuals who only vicariously share its life and destiny?

War in the 21st Century: Atavistic Behavior

Schumpeter in his book, Imperialism and Social Class, written shortly after the First World War, attempted to square his argument that capitalism is opposed to war by citing the re-emergence of residual “atavistic” traits, embedded in previous feudal warrior societies, as the cause of war. While I do not share Schumpeter’s view of the peaceful evolution of capitalism, particularly in the face of a series of imperialist wars in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, his concept of atavistic behavior is useful in explaining the irrational embrace of Israel by otherwise affluent, educated and highly influential Jews. Their embrace of Israel is certainly not for reasons of monetary remuneration, though Israel financially rewarded American-Jewish spies like Jonathan Pollard. What causes a modern or post-modern elite group to exhibit patterns of fanatical loyalty to a foreign militarist colonial power engaged in ethnic cleansing?

The Jewish-led and financed Zionist movement and its influential and wealthy supporters and leaders are a highly cohesive and disciplined group which exhibits zero tolerance against any Jewish dissidents or other critics of the warrior state or of their supporters anywhere in the world. What accounts for the apparent anomaly of highly educated professors, doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, media moguls and billionaire real estate tycoons giving unconditional support to a state engaged in primitive vindictive acts, of mass torture of prisoners, of collective punishment and guilt (destroying family homes of guerrilla suspects, taking family members hostage), systematically destroying farmland and uprooting hundreds of thousands of farmers, communities for almost six decades? They embrace ancient land claims and the vindictive and gratuitous humiliation of subjugated people based on mythological religious beliefs. The primitive belief in a “superior” or special people used to justify blood crimes harks back to the ritual barbarities of ancient tribal justice. This atavistic behavior is, however, tied to the most modern military technology in the hands of highly trained technical experts. The combination of tribal cohesion, religious mythology, high-tech weaponry and an overweening desire to exercise power on behalf of a military state based on ‘racial-religious’ exclusivity, is a potent concoction for US Zionists to inhale. Yet there are immense psychological satisfactions from being part of a powerful closed in-group, with a vision or fantasy of the revival of a lost ‘kingdom’, a sense of being part of superior people, members of a survivalist culture which has endured a unique suffering, and therefore possesses the righteousness to commit violence and use power to strike down adversaries anywhere and not to be bound by conventional international laws which only serve to limit the prerogatives of a ‘righteous people’.

Tribal loyalties have tight rules of conduct for all who are considered members, whether they are active practitioners of Zionist politics or even critics of the State of Israel – home of the chosen people. Tribal rules are interpreted in different ways by different segments of the Jewish Diaspora. For the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations and their functionaries there are Five Commandments: (1) ‘thou shalt not criticize any action by any Israeli leader at any time, no matter how heinous the crime, nor how often it is repeated, irregardless of how vast or intense world opprobrium’, (2) ‘Thou shall not allow any others to criticize or act contrary to Jewish State interests or to organizations which embrace the Zionist ideal,’ (3)‘Every weapon, financial, physical, psychological, ideological and economic can be legitimately wielded to weaken, isolate, discredit or stigmatize critics of the Tribal Homeland or any of the overseas Tribal Organizations,’ (4)‘Thou shall raise funds from all sources (legal or illegal), public, social or private to finance the military machine of the Tribal leaders – tribute secured from lesser “others” must enhance the security and living standards of the chosen people’ and (5)‘Thou shall declare loyalty first and foremost to the tribal identity, then to the powers which support “our tribe” and lastly to “universal values”’.

Despite sharp criticism from a minority of dissident Jews, both in Israel, the US and elsewhere, there are certain unstated codes which are observed even by the most critical commentators. One is to never criticize or identify the power of the Jewish organizations in the US and their influence in the government. Jewish progressives de facto denial of Jewish power in shaping US war policy in the Middle East severely restricts the effectiveness of the anti-war movement by exonerating one of the key ideological props of the imperial war machine. The second unstated code followed by the “observant” progressive Jewish intellectuals is a denial that Israel has an important influence on US Middle East and global policy via its tribal loyalists in the US. Jewish progressives deliberately and systematically exclude any mention of Jewish power and influence in shaping US policy in the Middle East by focusing exclusively on “oil interests” or “neo-conservative ideologues” (who just coincidently are mostly tribespeople and their camp-followers). In deference to or more precisely because they share a deep underlying identity with the tribe – they refuse to include any systematic study of the very obvious and blatant exercise of power in every branch of government, electoral processes and media reports. Likewise with the Middle East, Israel is considered by progressive Jews as an “instrument” of US imperialism even as the instrument cuts both ways – as Israel uses the US to savage its adversaries, to build up its military machine and to manufacture its commercial weapons systems to sell even to US competitors (i.e. China).

The emergence of atavistic behavior and its extension among the Zionist elite is a relatively recent development (over the past two decades) and goes contrary to the universalistic, secular and socialist values and practices as well as the traditional religious and communal practices and beliefs of many Jewish communities during previous centuries. The embrace of imperial power, the turn from religious communitarian values toward the embrace of the militaristic state of Israel, the shift from internationalism and socialism toward an unconditional embrace of a narrow exclusivist ideology has activated the latent atavistic behavior associated with vengeful killing of adversaries and blind singular loyalty to the idea of Israeli supremacy in the Middle East. Translated into the US context, it means virulent pro-war propaganda, advocacy of concentration camps for Islamic believers (as proposed by Daniel Pipes and others) and collaboration with Mossad agents in promoting Israel’s strategic military, economic and political goals; by utilizing all the instruments of power within the US and with its overseas clients (Kurdish regions of Iraq, for example).

Atavistic behavior secures its goals through the shrewd manipulation and artificial inflation of “fears” emanating from Israel’s enemies. The purpose is to create mass support in the US for wars on Israel’s behalf. US Zionist ideologues, drawing heavily on the self-induced political isolation which the Israeli State has brought upon itself through its savage destruction of Arab Palestine, have elaborated and preached a paranoid view of the world, in which all international organizations (the UN, the World Court etc.) and forums, international opinions surveys, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa are accused of “anti-Semitism” because they recognize and condemn Israel’s violation of Palestinian political and human rights.

The greater the “justifiable” violence of Israel, the wider the condemnation of its behavior, the more hysterical and strident the vituperation emanating from the major Zionist centers, the greater the concerted efforts to discredit the international bodies and to heighten US support. Just as an imaginary Neanderthal might bellow loudly and grab a heavy club when others protest his trespass of territory, so too do the Zionists reach for the club of US military power to pummel those who challenge Israel’s transgressions.

“Atavistic behavior” is not confined to affluent Zionists, it is found among civilian militarists, Christian Zionists and other religious fundamentalists, who are defenders and practitioners of unrestrained violence and permanent imperial wars. Under the veneer of civilized discourse and moderate tonalities, is the barely restrained lust for unlimited power, total warfare and uncompromising savage torture. Atavistic behavior increasingly threatens to overwhelm the rational basis of economic calculation. The civilian militarist who may have originally been seen by many capitalists as one tool among others for conquering markets and seizing strategic resources have gradually taken a life of their own, subordinating capitalist interests to their raging quest for unlimited power. Atavistic behavior is both the apogee of US imperial power and its ultimate regress to the dark ages.

Contemporary and future wars in the Middle East cannot be explained merely by reciting an inventory of economic resources and matching them with imperial strategic designs. This rationalist-economistic reductionism fails to take account of specific ideological, irrational political determinants which have demonstrated greater explanatory power.

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Their arrogance in exercising power is matched by their abject ignorance of the political and economic conditions and consequences of their decisions. Their blind subservience to serving Israel’s interests led them to “miscalculate” the massive degree of Iraqi opposition to the war and occupation. Their quest for world domination led to unsustainable multiple military invasions, leading to the weakening of the US Empire. Their militarist logic revealed their abysmal ignorance of the enormous destruction of lucrative Iraqi assets and the cost of war of war to the US economy. These policies forced sharp divisions within the imperial state. In response, the extremists in the Pentagon have seized control over intelligence functions and special forces operations, involving clandestine operations. The Second Bush administration is more extreme and even more aggressive than the first. The political conflict within the State is extending into civil society where over half of the population opposes the plans for new wars. Instead of adopting an empire-building strategy mixing economic, political and diplomatic pressures with selective wars, the civilian militarists have, in the Middle East, relied exclusively on military strategies. Even within this one-sided military approach, they have chosen the most extreme measures, unilateral permanent wars, as opposed to coalitions (and joint colonial spoils) and limited wars (in time and place). Military extremism in pursuit of unsustainable colonial war is no virtue.

Israel’s dirty little colonial war, despite its daily civilian assassinations, terror bombings and ritual torture and humiliation of the Palestinians has not succeeded in 60 years of warfare against 3 million Palestinians even with universal conscription and life-time military reservists. The civilian militarists in the imperial state have learned nothing from Israel’s failures: For them Israel can do no wrong, it can never fail, it is their living ideological model of the military will to conquer. Our own civilian militarists, in their exalted hubris believe that 150,000 colonial forces could defeat 200,000 armed resistance fighters backed by over 20 million fellow citizens.