Today on Alternet, Rabbi Michael Lerner Observes that
"Bush and his advisors in the neo-con camp see in the current violence yet another opportunity to reframe the Middle East struggle as one that will provide ex post facto justification for the war in Iraq and
enticement for new militarist adventures to destabilize or overthrow oppressive regimes in Iran and Syria...While partisans on all sides of this struggle must abandon their fantasy of ultimate justification of their claims, a clear first step is to dismiss the neo-con fantasy of a global war of civilizations, with its accompanying notion that this is the best way to reframe the globalization of capital and American corporate domination of the world as a path to expand democracy and human rights. That fantasy is dead " Full text and a number of comments at http://www.alternet.org/... "Middle East Violence: Neocons' Fantasy" By Michael Lerner, AlterNet. Posted July 17, 2006.
Way back in the '60s Zbigniew Brzezinski advised US policy makers that
inevitably the Third World was rising, China and India looming on the
horizon as major competitors of Western capitalism. The catalyst of
this development would be the rapidly modernizing Arabic world.
Cutting the legs from under Arabic modernization, disrupting
relationships between Arabs and other Asians -- was essential. Samuel
Huntington, Brzezinski's old Harvard buddy, soon wrote The Clash of
Civilizations, which became the Neocon paradigm for justifying acting
upon Brzezinski's advice.
From this point of view, as George Lakeoff said recently in a
brilliant piece, the current US Incumbency has not been failing in its
foreign policy. Where it has failed, I perceive, is in underestimating the ability
of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement to produce effective response.
It would appear that Hezbollah and Hamas may now be making common
cause -- a significant development, since these groups have
represented conflicting interests within the Arabic world. What it
would mean is that Israel's old methodology of damaging assailants'
home base in order to discourage support for them, is no longer
feasible even as Machiavellian strategy. Israel assailants' home base
is now global, in all probability.
It serves Neocon interests for the only stability in the Middle East
to remain a state of perpetual conflict. What this will mean for
Israel is constant harassment, the draining of energy and lives,
sheer misery, slow death. What it will mean for Palestinians is less
protection than ever from being employed only as mercenaries, a fate
Arafat protected them from to a remarkable degree for years.
Lerner's view is accurate in some regards, but rather provincial in
others. All warring parties in this conflict are merely pawns on the
Grand Chessboard.