A Syrian peace partnerBack in December 1990, then U.S. secretary of state James Baker famously said, "It is in a situation such as we have in the Gulf that we cooperate with a major Arab country who happens to share the same goals as we do." Back then, Baker was referring to Syria.
These words were the first signs of a concrete rapprochement between Damascus and Washington, after a gridlock in relations that had lasted, on and off, since 1979.
George Bush Sr came to the White House with a new mentality, much like Barack Obama in 2009.
When the Gulf War broke out in January 1991, Bush made sure that Israel kept out of the conflict in order to prevent alienating Syria from Operation Desert Storm, and forced Israel to practice self-restraint when Saddam Hussain showered the Israeli capital with Scud missiles.
Annoyed by a remark made by Israeli finance minister Yitzhak Modai, who claimed that Washington would have to pay Israel $2 billion (Dh7.3 billion) in compensation for the Scud attacks, Bush refused to channel a $400 million housing development loan to Israel, promised earlier to Israeli housing minister Ariel Sharon.
This is the kind of pressure Syria is seeking from the U.S. Administration today, to get Benjamin Netanyahu to commit to peace on the Golan, and to a freeze on colonies.
Currently, nearly 300,000 Israelis live in colonies in the West Bank, and approximately 200,000 are found in East Jerusalem.
So far, all we have heard from Netanyahu is that colonies are part of the "natural growth" of the state of Israel, and that Jerusalem - occupied by Israel in 1967 - will remain "Israel's capital".
This week, Obama's envoy George Mitchell wrapped up meetings in Damascus, where he described his talks with President Bashar Al Assad as "very candid and positive", adding that he told his Syrian host that Obama is "determined to facilitate a truly comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace".
Meanwhile, in Israel he tried to downplay very visible differences with Israeli officials by describing disagreements as "discussions among friends".
He then quickly added, "There isn't agreement on all points, and on several issues we are trying to reach an understanding."
It is rather ironic that, coinciding with an American administration that wants to change the status quo in the Middle East, comes a hard-line government in Israel that is interested in nothing but escalation.
Some hardliners in the U.S. are still not convinced that Syria is ready for peace, arguing that it wants a peace process, rather than a peace treaty, with Israel.
They believe that because of the election results in Lebanon, and what happened in Iran since June 12, Syria is in a weaker position today, and therefore, more pressure should be applied to it, to extract concessions on the Hezbollah and Hamas resistance movements.
That is apparently not what Obama thinks, since shortly after the Lebanese elections, not only did he send Mitchell on his first visit to Syria, but also announced that he would be sending an ambassador to Damascus to fill a post that has been vacant since 2005, and quickly withdrew the charge d'affaires, who was a reminder to the Syrians of the Bush era.
Taking the lead from the U.S. is Saudi Arabia, which has engaged positively with the Syrians since January, ending tension that has lasted since 2005.
When will Americans come to aid Palestine?Unless President Barack Obama resolves to expunge "special" from the U.S.-Israeli "special relationship," this entangled alliance will continue to ensure that the U.S. is portrayed as guilty by its association with Tel Aviv's thuggish behavior in Palestine and elsewhere. And by the U.S. insistence that Israel not be held accountable under international law.
On July 3rd, Israeli ambassador Michael Oren claimed “Iran nuke could wipe Israel off the map in seconds.” An accurate translation reveals that what the president of Iran proposes is that Zionism be “erased from the pages of history.” But why quibble over words and their intent when Israel’s intent is to create a consensus that ensures war with Iran?
Two days after Oren’s saber-rattling speech, Vice-President Joe Biden was asked in a televised interview whether the Obama Administration would restrain Israeli military action against Iran. President Obama was then out of the country. A self-proclaimed Zionist, Biden responded, “Israel can determine for itself—it’s a sovereign nation—what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.”
Unfamiliar with the refrain, “loose lips sink ships,” Biden’s cavalier comment evoked memories of Vice President Dick Cheney who routinely waited until his boss was out of town to make bellicose remarks that moved the U.S. steadily closer to war in Iraq.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, scrambled to offset the impression left by Biden’s comment. Astute strategists know it is the small impressions that, step-by-step, form the consensus beliefs that shape policy-making. It was the gradual drip, drip, drip of such impressions that created the (false) consensus belief that Iraq had WMD, ties to Al Qaeda and mobile biological weapons laboratories.
Pro-Israeli pundits quickly claimed that, with Biden’s comment, Washington had given Tel Aviv the green light to attack Iran. Mullen grabbed media attention to reconfirm the obvious: an attack on Iran could have “grave and unpredictable consequences.”
Prison rape as policy in U.S.On June 23rd, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) issued its long awaited report on the state of rape in America’s prisons. This august group’s findings were duly noted in the flood of daily media and, like so many other well-intentioned blue-ribbon commission reports, will be quickly forgotten. However, while unstated, its primary finding is evident to all: the American prison system is the domestic corollary to the global war on terror.
Rape is sexual violence, a personal and social ritual of patriarchy. Men most often rape women and girls, reminding them that physical terror and sexual violation enforce the structure of power. Male rape of men, like their rape of females, serves to harm the victim, both to physically terrorize and to psychologically shame. Male rape of other males asserters the darkest dimension of masculinity under patriarchy.
Rape victims, both women and men, share an existential sense of violation; the victim is both physically invaded or overpowered and shamed or stigmatized. For the perpetrator, rape enables him to enforce the structure of social hierarchy and control.
Nowhere is the need to delineate the structure of power greater than the prison and the military. As Foucault made clear in “Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison,” prison is a living hell. It is a domestic war zone where, in a highly regulated social organization, a quasi-military force maintains order through terror both formal and informal. Prison rape (especially male rape) is a cousin to the rape and other forms of sexual terror practiced as a tactic by the U.S. military and intelligence operatives in the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. [see “Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown,” CounterPunch, May 15-17, 2009, and "Sexual Terrorism: The Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror," CounterPunch, May 13, 2008]
Angela Davis astutely observed years ago that we live under the domestic tyranny of a prison-industrial complex. It is cousin to the military-industrial complex first identified by Eisenhower a half-century ago and that still drives American global imperialism. Like Rome of old, America is a garrison state.
According to the NPREC study, more than 7.3 million people are captives of the American “correctional facilities or supervised” by the criminal justice system. Among these are some 2.2 million adults imprisoned throughout the country and an addition 5.1 million adults “under correctional supervision” in federal, state and local facilities throughout the country.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) finds that, in 2006, 112,498 federal and state prisoners were women; white, blacks and Hispanic made up 40, 42 and 16 percent, respectively, of the prison population. Finally, nearly 100,000 juveniles were under confinement, more than half being 16 years or younger.
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