Obama: Make US domination of the Middle East more effective

Obama made his pitch to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday with a speech here in Chicago. I encourage anyone who still has illusions about Obama's great progressive candidacy to read the full text. Taken as a whole, the speech is sickening. It's not so much that Obama states his strong support for American imperialism in the Middle East and Israel's continuing repression - we're probably desensitized to that sort of thing by now. It's that he lavishes long passages on humanizing Israelis in service to the dehumanization of Arabs. There is no evidence from the text that Israel has ever committed a single questionable act, while Arabs are seen to be constantly terrorizing poor Israel.

In the speech Obama also spells out clear policies on Iran, Iraq, and Israel. He calls Iran "one of the greatest threats to the United States, Israel and world peace" and criticizes Bush administration policy for making Iran stronger. Obama's approach would include

direct engagement with Iran similar to the meetings we conducted with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, laying out in clear terms our principles and interests. Tough-minded diplomacy would include real leverage through stronger sanctions. It would mean more determined U.S diplomacy at the United Nations. It would mean harnessing the collective power of our friends in Europe who are Iran’s major trading partners. It would mean a cooperative strategy with Gulf States who supply Iran with much of the energy resources it needs. It would mean unifying those states to recognize the threat of Iran and increase pressure on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. It would mean full implementation of U.S. sanctions laws. And over the long term, it would mean a focused approach from us to finally end the tyranny of oil, and develop our own alternative sources of energy to drive the price of oil down.

In other words, Obama would expend considerable effort to isolate Iran and destroy its economy while conducting discussions with its government. Obama's policy would only strengthen the Irani desire for nuclear weapons to protect itself. And it's probably untenable anyway. US sanctions are already extremely strong, so the only change is that Obama would strong-arm European and Middle Eastern countries to further isolate Iran - something the Bush administration has already tried unsuccessfully. But that aside, what's revealing is that Obama supports collective punishment of the Irani people as a means of reducing their leadership - including their elected president - to subservience.

On Iraq, Obama calls for troop withdrawal to be completed by 2008 May. But, he also has this to say:

My plan also allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain and prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for international terrorism and reduce the risk of all-out chaos. In addition, we will redeploy our troops to other locations in the region, reassuring our allies that we will stay engaged in the Middle East.

This is a nice way of saying that altho the project of establishing Iraq as a military base from which the US could project military power throughout the region has failed, Obama has no intention of giving up the larger objective. American domination of the Middle East is the reason terrorists target the US, but just like every Republican and Democratic president since FDR, for Obama controlling the region's oil is the most important thing.

As for Israel, Obama argues that America must never apply any sort of pressure on that country - certainly not by withdrawing the massive subsidies the US provides, but not even thru toothless diplomatic pressure. "No Israeli Prime Minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States", he says, and "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance". He also blames Lebanon for Israel's attack against it, and refuses to work with the "extremists" who Palestinians elected to represent them.

Now, Clinton and Edwards (and McCain and Giuliani) are just as bad as Obama on all these issues. But people whose critical faculties have for unknown reasons been overwhelmed by Obama's empty rhetoric about hope should pay more attention to speeches like these, in which he reveals his concrete policies. We have to wait and see if Obama comes up with anything good on domestic policy, but until that time I see no reason to support him over Edwards.

More on the Democrats

Here's a short and unsatisfying list of John Edwards's policy positions. He sounds a lot better than Obama on energy, sounds about the same on Iran. Here's a much more satisfying interview with Edwards, mainly about Iran and Israel. Clinton, Edwards, and Obama all seem to have the same dishonest policy on Iran - they harshly criticize Bush for not negotiating with Iran, but insist on "keeping all options on the table". It's dishonest because the goal of the negotiations - that Iran renounce nuclear weapons even as it is surrounded on literally all sides by hostile nuclear powers - is simply not realistic. And that only leaves military action or a continuation of the "containment" policy pursued by all administrations since the American client regime was overthrown.

So Edwards seems pretty bad on foreign policy, just another liberal imperialist. When asked "What does Iraq say about the feasibility and the bar for invading countries in the Middle East?", Edwards responds, "It means that we have to be much more careful." In other words, for Edwards the problem with the Iraq war is that it was done recklessly, under false pretenses. He refuses to condemn the crime of aggressive war, and he refuses to condemn American supremacy.

Here is an article on Obama's Israel policy. Surprise! He blames the Palestinians for being oppressed. So on Israel, too, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are tied - all lousy.

I suppose it's a bit much to ask for an anti-imperialist to emerge as a viable Democratic candidate. The American elite has been united behind American supremacy since 1945, and Democratic presidents have been some of the most violent in their defense of it. To the extent this election is worth spending time on, Edwards still seems to be the best candidate at this point. Sad that in the first race in which a woman and a black man are viable, they are also the least progressive. Sad, but revealing.

Zionist hysterics

Here's a classic and hilarious example of Zionist excess - in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who can be blamed for supporting widespread and serious - but nonfatal - human rights abuses, is transmogrified into an evil far worse than Saddam Hussein, who incidentally is directly responsible for killing a couple hundred thousand people. The speaker is Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League.

“There is a difference between Ahmadinejad and even a Saddam Hussein,” Foxman rejoined. “Here is a man who says time and again, ‘I will wipe this nation’ ” — Israel — “ ‘off the face of the earth,’ and says afterward that the Holocaust never happened. This is not ‘Israel as victim’; this is the destruction of Jewish identity.”

Foxman made a beseeching gesture, his fingertips cupped before his mouth. “Plus, it has happened before,” he went on. “It’s not an abstraction. By a man, by a government, who aids, abets, fuels suicide bombers, makes them martyrs, celebrates them, who asks for volunteers from his country, and I don’t know what they have, 40,000 now, who have volunteered in future to go kill Jews!” Foxman was now shouting at me across the table. “And you arm yourself to take out as many Jews as possible!” Foxman’s hands were wheeling in circles before him; this possible Holocaust, so remote to many of us, seemed to rise up before him with a terrible clarity. “Oh, my God!” he cried, as if reeling in horror before the vision he had himself conjured.

Why the US alliance with Israel?

A long-running debate on the left has been revived by the controversial report "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Why is the US alliance with Israel so strong?

It's a puzzling question because the level of commitment the USA has given Israel is without comparison. The USA devotes about one-fifth of its total foreign aid budget to Israel and Israel has been the leading recipient of foreign aid every year since 1976, for a total of $140 million since World War II (cited in Mearsheimer and Walt). Mearsheimer and Walt succinctly demolish the idea that the reason for these incredible levels of support has anything to do with the moral superiority of Israel, and they throw into question strategic rationales for the alliance. Their answer is that the incredible influence of the Israel lobby over foreign policy is responsible for the alliance.

Mearsheimer and Walt, two leading academic proponents of foreign policy "realism", argue that American interests are not served by the alliance with Israel, and that the Israel lobby distorts America's rational self-interest. Many people on the left basically agree, and in addition to the moral imperative of ending support for the human rights violations of Israel, argue against the alliance.

But other leftists have a different explanation for the USA-Israel alliance. They argue that it's not the Israel lobby that explains the alliance, but the strategic necessities of American imperialism. Israel is a proxy for the United States in a region that the USA insists on dominating because of its unmatched energy resources. Norman Finkelstein makes this argument on ZNet. Michael Neumann responds to Finkelstein, arguing strongly against the idea of strategic interests driving American Israel policy, on Counterpunch.

The analytical disagreement on the left often falls along radical/liberal lines. Radicals tend to argue that deep structures (capitalism or the state) are driving foreign policy, whereas liberals tend to argue it's more individuals and ideology. The radical demand for revolutionary change follows from their argument, while the liberal prescription of convincing our leaders of their follies follows from theirs.

On Israel, the arguments break down similarly: liberals like Neumann say the alliance is just a result of the Israel lobby and that our leaders should recognize that the alliance is actually detrimental to national interests. Radicals like Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky say the alliance is actually a structural imperative, and if we want to help the Palestinians we have to fundamentally attack American imperialism and the very concept of national interests.

As to the merits of their arguments, Neumann overstates a number of his arguments to the point of disingenuousness. He tries to play down the strength of Israel, the unreliability of other regional American allies, and the precariousness of Gulf state elites. But Israel really is many times militarily stronger than any other state in the region. Popular feeling in Israel really does make it a far more dependable ally than any Arab state will ever be. And the grip on power of Gulf state elites is far more tenuous than Neumann acknowledges. This has been a constant concern of US planners for 60 years. Furthermore, statements like "The US relies on its fleet and can easily launch devastating attacks without any land bases at all" and "Egypt's instability would quickly vanish were it so lucky as Israel with American largesse, and were America to wean itself of its attachment to Israel" - are simply completely wrong.

On the other hand, he makes a good point: the USA really doesn't seem to be getting much out of Israel strategically. So why the alliance?

I don't think it's simply because of the Israel lobby. The China lobby, which supported the Guomindang against the Communists in the Chinese civil war, makes an instructive comparison. It was extremely powerful in Congress and counted many influential and wealthy people in its ranks, yet the USA dropped the Guomindang in an instant as soon as the strategic realities called for it.

Another interesting point is something Finkelstein mentions: before the 1967 war, the USA was pretty much indifferent to Israel, afterward it became one of America's most important allies almost immediately. This points strongly to something other than the Israel lobby at work. Chomsky argues the 1967 war showed Israel to be the preeminent military power in the region, and that's what made it newly attractive as an ally.

I do think the alliance is primarily strategic. Yet I'm not convinced that it's because Israel is useful for projecting American power. Israel probably is seen as a trump card in case anything really catastrophic for American domination of the region happens, but I’m not sure this is adequate to explain the extraordinary levels of support it receives. Despite the destabilizing effects of the alliance on the USA’s other regional client states that Neumann points out, planners may also be acting to actually stabilize the Middle East. By making Israel far stronger than any of its opponents, the Arab countries have been forced to give up the idea of starting another war. Israel has also long provided secret aid to American projects around the world, from training counterinsurgency forces in Central America to aiding covert American operations in the Middle East.

I’m not really satisfied with these answers either, and must admit that I can’t fully explain the alliance with Israel. But I will come down on the side of the radicals in that I don’t think American support for Israel can be separated from the larger question of American domination of the Middle East, and that we should oppose not only the Israel lobby but the idea of national interests itself, which animates the Mearsheimer and Walt critique and is at least exploited by otherwise humanitarian-minded liberals.