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We never seem to learn, do we? Certainly not when it comes to air power. After all, as Dave de Camp has reported at Antiwar.com, the Trump administration has now broken all previous records when it comes to U.S. airstrikes in Somalia. Can you even believe it? Somalia? As of the end of September, it had launched 80 of them there this year alone! (And exclamation points are indeed in order here!) Mind you, while the Trump administration has broken all records in that country, its hardly been alone. American presidents started launching air strikes in Somalia while George W. Bush was in the White House! They were also launched in the Obama and Biden years, as well as in Donald Trumps first term in office (a total of 219 of them in those four years alone)! And yet, after all that time and all those airstrikes, the enemy, the Houthis, simply continue to exist.
As TomDispatch regular Juan Cole, who runs the must-read Informed Comment website, reminds us today, air power has been with us in a devastating fashion since early in the last century. The nightmare of air power and it is a nightmare was exposed vividly in the Vietnam era when the U.S. dropped an estimated 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in a losing war effort.
And now, of course, in the Middle East, Israel has launched air strike after air strike devastating the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip, but also hitting Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen and even Qatar, Americas ally there (while it was trying to broker a peace in the region). And yet, as Cole points out so vividly today, air power while, as in Gaza, being devastating beyond words in its destructiveness, offers anything but a guarantee of ultimate success. Let him explain. Tom
A Huge Airbase with a Small Country Attached to It
Israel and Bomber Harriss Ghost
By Juan Cole
Donald Trumps and Benjamin Netanyahu's nomination of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his hands already crimson with the blood of innocent Iraqis, to run post-war Gaza, brings to mind a distant era when London sent its politicians out to be viceroys in its global colonial domains. Consider Blair's proposed appointment, made (of course!) without consulting any Palestinians, a clear signal that the Middle East has entered a second era of Western imperialism. Other than Palestine, which has already been subjected to classic settler colonialism, our current neo-imperial moment is characterized by the American use of Israel as its base in the Middle East and by the employment of air power to subdue any challengers.
Swarming
The odd assortment of grifters, oil men, financiers, mercenaries, White nationalists, and Christian and Jewish Zionists now presiding in Washington, led by that great orange-hued hotelier-in-chief, has (with the help of Germany, Great Britain, and France) built up Israel into a huge airbase with a small country attached to it. From that airbase, a constant stream of missiles, rockets, drones, and fighter jets routinely swarm out to hit regional neighbors.
Gaza was pounded into rubble almost hourly for the last two years, only the first month of which could plausibly have been justified as self-defense in the wake of the horrific Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Even the Palestinian West Bank, already under Israeli military rule, has been struck repeatedly from above. Lebanon has been subject to numerous bombings despite a supposed ceasefire, as has Syria (no matter that its leader claims he wants good relations with his neighbor). Yemen, which has indeed fired missiles at Israel to protest the genocide in Gaza, has now been hit endlessly by the Israelis, who also struck Iranian nuclear enrichment sites and other targets last June.
Some of the Israeli bombing raids or missile and drone strikes were indeed tit-for-tat replies to attacks by that country's enemies. Others were only made necessary because of Israeli provocations, including its seemingly never-ending atrocities in Gaza, to which regional actors have felt compelled to reply. Many Israeli strikes, however, have had little, if anything, to do with self-defense, often being aimed at civilian targets or at places like Syria that pose no immediate threat. On September 9th, Israel even bombed Qatar, the country its leaders had asked to help negotiate with Hamas for the return of Israeli hostages taken on October 7th.
In short, what were now seeing is Israels version of air-power colonialism.
Typically, its fighter jets bombed the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on August 28th, assassinating northern Yemen's prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahwi, along with several senior members of the regions Houthi government and numerous journalists. (Israeli officials had previously boasted that they could have killed the top leadership of Iran in their 12-day war on that country in June.)
In reality, Tel Aviv is now shaping governments of the Middle East simply by wiping their officials off the face of the earth or credibly threatening to do so. Israel has also had an eerie hand in shaping outside perceptions of developments in the region by regularly assassinating journalists, not only in Palestine but also in Lebanon and as far abroad as Yemen. However, by failing to come close to subduing the region entirely, what Tel Aviv has created is a negative version of hegemony rather than grasping any kind of positive leadership role.
Negative Imperialism
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