Sharonism In the Iron Hammer  Sharon’s antiterrorism strategies haven’t stopped terrorism in Israel, the Sharon inspired Iron Hammer, won’t work in Iraq

by Jesse Lee

OpEdNews.com

 New York, N.Y.: Just when you think things in Iraq can't get any worse, they do. What do you think the result of the "get tough" policy is likely to be? Is it likely to spark a cycle of violence?

Dana Priest: Yes. This is beginning to look a lot like the Israeli response to the Palestinian uprising. It would be fine to "get tough" with bombers, but the inevitable collateral damage of bombing homes, for instance, in retaliation will certainly inflame the anti-American sentiment.

-From an online chat with Washington Post reporter Dana Priest

Many on the left, including too many “Jews control everything” conspiracy theorists, have claimed that the Iraq invasion was a proxy war for Israel. While the term “proxy war” almost certainly overstates the case, since certainly Israeli interests were not the sole or even the main motivation for war, there is a great deal of merit in the contention that Sharon did lobby for this war, and that this administration has closer ties to the Israeli right than any US administration since Israel’s creation.

This relationship has been largely hidden behind the scenes, expressed and developed by a diligent and well-orchestrated think tank consortium. Many Americans are finally beginning to realize how influential the conservative and neoconservative think tank infrastructure has been in shaping US policy, and in particular promoting the Iraq war. Amongst the handful of particularly potent neocon think tanks, JINSA is the one most focused on packaging, promoting, and increasingly, defending Likud policy. Richard Perle, disgraced former chair but still leading member of the Defense Policy Board, is nothing short of amazing in his influence throughout these organizations, holding leadership status in a half dozen neocon think tanks, and carrying a particularly heavy load in those focused on Israel. This is not so surprising, considering he formerly worked as a policy advisor for Likud.  (For an exhaustive run-down of this think tank apparatus, see Jason Vest’s piece in the Nation.)

More generally though, the neocons are probably the most staunchly pro-Likud clique in Washington. Amazingly, even as President Bush was pushing the Road Map, and even after Sharon had tepidly accepted it, the neocons drafted a letter condemning the plan for placing too much of a burden on Israel. It is difficult not to interpret such an act as a demonstration that the neocons would prefer no peace at all to one that “insults” Israel by expecting them to make concessions as well. Quite frankly, for this reason alone the neocons would be properly called “pro-Likud” rather than “pro-Israel”.  Indeed, the fact that at least a very sizable minority in Israel disagrees with Sharon should make even the neocons themselves hesitate at giving themselves the latter, more flattering title.

But the connections of Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and the rest of the neocons to Sharon’s Party have a deeper relevance than speculation on the extent to which Sharon’s Iraq-war advocacy motivated the invasion. What is more important, and more dangerous is the degree to which the neocons and Likud share the same ideology. In many ways, the Bush Doctrine itself, almost always referred to as a revolutionary and experimental foreign policy stance, is simply a rehashing of Sharon’s Palestine policy in a larger theatre. And however one might judge Sharon in moral terms, it is not an open question as to whether his policies have been effective. As the Washington Post reported recently, even Israelis who have traditionally supported Sharon are coming to the realization that his policies are perpetuating, not curtailing violence. A number of Israeli fighter pilots recently condemned Israeli air strikes, which routinely kill five innocent bystanders for every alleged Hamas member they kill, to be immoral, and refused to fly any such missions. Even Sharon’s top general recently went public with a blistering critique of the current policy. After years upon years of what is essentially the Bush Doctrine, which to be sure appeals to the pride of ordinary Israelis, and which satiates a somewhat understandable hunger for revenge, Israelis are finally realizing that such a policy simply does not work.

And so it is tragically ironic that even as Israelis are beginning to accept that the experiment has failed, Sharon’s ideological brethren in the White House seem to be setting up another run. Within the last two weeks the US military launched its first air strikes since “Mission Accomplished”, and far from precision strikes on known combatants, the attacks had all of the earmarks of those ordered by Sharon.  Several of the buildings bombed were later shown to have either nothing or extremely little to do with any sort of resistance, and the bombings seemed to be nothing more than a frustrated lashing out and an idle show of force.  Administration officials increasingly speak of an “iron hammer” and demonstrating to the Iraqis once and for all who is in charge, all on the theory that the insurgents will be intimidated or deterred back into the holes from which they came.

How absurd, how blind, how catastrophically stupid.

Sharon’s ideology, now manifest in the Bush Doctrine, has already been tested, and has already failed dismally. Far from deterring the opposition, these policies embolden them, while simultaneously managing to alienate the general populace, driving them directly into the arms of the opposition. This goes not only for localized Iraq missions, but for Bush’s Middle East policy in general. While the exact make-up of the administration’s motives in Iraq are still almost anybody’s guess, most agree that it was designed as a display of brute force, highlighted in “Shock & Awe”, and meant to intimidate terrorists, rogue states, and probably everybody else into accepting American preeminence. But far from putting the fear of God into Al Qaeda, the war served as the network’s most sensational recruiting tool to date, while concurrently detracting valuable intelligence resources in the vain attempt to justify administration claims about Iraqi WMD.  Despite the loftiest of rhetoric and the most sincere gazes into the camera, Bush has incited a hatred of America greater than she has ever known. In attempting to portray Bush as an epic leader, the administration has instead confirmed all of the fundamentalists’ allegations about the lying, imperial West, and has set up Osama bin Laden as an epic rallying point to draw together and unite haters of America across the globe. Osama t-shirts and American flag-burnings are commonplace throughout the developing world, and attacks throughout the Middle East only continue to increase with no sign of cessation.

One of the reasons Sharon has enjoyed continued popularity in Israel (until recently) is that his hard-line policies promote a cycle of violence that leaves his citizenry with a sense of wounded pride, a profound mourning, and an overwhelming desire for revenge or at least some sort of definite assertion of power- in turn leading them back to him, the “man of action”.  But the brief period of hope which hinged on the now defunct Road Map seems to have interrupted this cycle just long enough for at least some Israelis to ask: how long  these policies can continue without any hope of success.  It appears that now is a moment of honest reflection that was for so long made impossible by the blinding rage of the cycle.

America is at this very moment standing on the cliff while our executive branch prepares to dive into this very cycle, taking at least our troops if not our entire citizenry with it. The administration may not have much luck in rallying Americans the way Sharon has managed to rally Israelis, since unlike in Israel, there can be little doubt who started the Iraq war.  But if a serious debate is to occur on the merits of the Bush Doctrine as a means to combat terrorism, the time is now.  Most terrorism experts (in the parlance of our time) agree that the only way to do away with terrorists, without inspiring a dozen more to take their place, is to marginalize them, and to give the population from which they recruit a confidence that they can vent their grievances in other ways. Is the Bush Doctrine doing this, or is it instead bringing terrorists who were once marginal directly into the mainstream? Did Bush at once declare that nations and peoples are “either with us, or they are with the terrorists”, and then give them every reason to not be with us? In recent weeks, the Bush administration has done what was once unthinkable, resorting to the neoconservative sophistry which they spent so much effort keeping under wraps in the build-up to war.  They refer to the “weakness” and “decadence” of the Clinton years, putting themselves forth as some sort of Nietzschean uber-leaders.  Is it really a sign of strength to send the young men and women of one’s country to kill and die, men and women who one will never meet and whose funerals one cannot be bothered to attend, knowing that their heroics will only bring more death and destruction?  We as citizens can address these questions now, or we can be intimidated into silence by the shrill calls of “appeasement”. If the cycle begins though, it will be on a global scale, and as peace-minded Israelis can attest, we may not have another chance to ask for years to come.

Jesse Lee is a regular columnist for www.opednews.com and operates Common Sense, a biweekly newsletter designed for distribution by online readers in Bush Country.  He co-operates the blog www.moneyjungle.org and is a founding contributor to the platform of 2020 Democrats.  To comment on this column, or to receive Common Sense via email, contact Jesse at commonsense@opednews.com.