Palestine & Vietnam

["Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is aimed at a couple of different lists, so parts of
it that seem commonplace to some will provoke others,
and vice versa.

If it's not too obvious, it seems worth saying that the
Middle East complex of issues -- fundamentalism, terrorist
attacks on the U.S., oil, and Palestine -- is what will
dominate U.S. political discourse for some time to come,
much in the way that SE Asia did in decades past.  The
future of the anti-globalization movement will depend on
how it is able to link up with this.

As before in SE Asia, the conflict presently entails a
heavy Democratic Party/organized labor investment in a
bad political position -- wholly uncritical support for
Sharon's campaign.  This is unfortunate in that
it sustains bad U.S. policy, but the silver lining
is that it leaves the field open for a left analysis.

In SE Asia there was nothing so obvious as oil to buttress
a simple story of what was going on.  On the other hand, the
ME oil story is clearly more complicated than the U.S. role
in, say, Venezuela.  The challenge to left economists is
to amplify an analysis that locates material factors --
such as they are, or aren't -- in the broader conflict.
Ownership and control of oil is clearly huge; how much
it has to do with Sharon's offensive is not so clear.
More broadly, there has been a long-running debate about
the use of Israel and zionism in international oil politics.
Is Israel just a pain in the ass to U.S. policy in this vein,
an artifact of domestic politics, or does it play a major
instrumental function.

The politics take more skill than in re: Vietnam because
there are two legitimate national aspirations in question,
not simple national independence of a ethnically uniform
nation from the U.S. and its errand boys.  That a jewish
homeland is involved also raises a batch of risk factors,
either in terms of giving encouragement to genuinely
unsavory, rightist elements, or in crafting a flawed,
chauvinistic message that alienates likely sympathizers
in the U.S.  I might note in the last regard that Palestinian
organizers at the march yesterday discouraged the use of
anti-*jewish* slogans and images, even trying to dissuade
some people from displaying Sharon with a swastika on
his forehead -- something I might be moved to do myself.

Aside from the importance of relating the mystery of petro-
imperialism to U.S. and Israeli aggressions, I want to suggest
a few points of unity for the politics of this era, as far as
'foreign policy' is concerned:

1  There is no uniquely legitimate 'side,' as far as national
aspirations are concerned.  There is broad agreement as
to where we must end up -- with two states.  Everybody knows
this.  Similarly, everyone understands that both states need
security and economic integrity.  One can justify a larger
Israeli defense apparatus because it has security concerns
beyond Palestine; and one can justify reparations to
Palestine because its economy has been strangled and
now nearly destroyed by Israel.

2  Given (1), there is no purpose in moral distinctions
between two sides that are both complicit in the deaths of many
innocent people.  This is not the same as recognizing and condemning
the leading edges of such atrocities on both sides -- the Sharon/Peres
government, and the Islamic/Al Aqsa bombers.  Nobody's hands are
completely clean, but it is still possible to make distinctions
as to who is a likely participant in a settlement and who is not.

3  The Israeli argument is that they are doing no more than what
the U.S. did in response to 9/11.  I think we miss a point if we
concede that the U.S. was no more concerned w/collateral damage
in Afghanistan than Israel is in the West Bank.  I would say the
whole point of Sharon's offensive is to wreak collateral damage.
As far as mayhem was concerned, the U.S. aim was to destroy the
Taliban government and the OBL network.  One does not have to
agree on the justification for the Afgh campaign to decry the
long-standing excesses of Israel in the West Bank.

4  The Israeli argument in one sense is an opportunity.  It is quite
true that what they do resembles what the U.S. has done in the past.
We should welcome this matter being opened up.  One does
not have to argue about, say, the U.S. role in WWII to recognize the
purpose of U.S. deeds in Dresden, Hiroshima, or Sherman marching through
Georgia.  More important I would say are potential U.S. interventions --
Iraq, Colombia, Somalia -- in the near term.  The task in my view is to be
able to parse out whatever slim pretexts there are in terms of U.S. domestic
security from the likely preponderance of interests rooted in geopolitical
ambitions, a.k.a. imperialism.  I say preponderance because most of what
the U.S. military could do against Al Queda has now been done.  The future
entails killing fifty people for a chance to wing one bad guy.

In a nutshell, a blanket equation of U.S. with Israel, or of Sharon with
all zionists/israelis/jews, a failure to make distinctions among political
personalities in assorted quarters, or an indulgence of the desire to
condemn U.S. policy wholesale, from top to bottom, now yesterday and
forever, will not make for good radical politics.

mbs