History repeats itself: first time as tragedy, second time as farce

Uri Avnery is an Israeli, a Two-State Solution proponent, a progressive...and I don't always agree with his views. His voice is important though and here it is, shared in its entirety, on freezing "all" settlement activity.
Sigh, Avnery is right. What does Obama do for the next 3 years after these sorts of (continuing) collapses? Lame-duck-i-tude after nine months is alarming....

The Drama and the Farce by Uri Avnery

NO POINT denying it: in the first round of the match between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama was beaten.

Obama had demanded a freeze of all settlement activity, including East Jerusalem, as a condition for convening a tripartite summit meeting, in the wake of which accelerated peace negotiations were to start, leading to peace between two states – Israel and Palestine.

In the words of the ancient proverb, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Netanyahu has tripped Obama on his first step. The President of the United States has stumbled.


THE THREEFOLD summit did indeed take place. But instead of a shining achievement for the new American administration, we witnessed a  humbling demonstration of weakness. After Obama was compelled to give up his demand for a settlement freeze, the meeting no longer had any content.

True, Mahmoud Abbas did come, after all. He was dragged there against his will. The poor man was unable to refuse the invitation from Obama, his only support. But he will pay a heavy price for this flight: the Palestinians, and the entire Arab world, have seen his weakness. And Obama, who had started his term with a ringing speech to the Muslim world from Cairo, now looks like a broken reed.

The Israeli peace movement has been dealt another painful blow. It had pinned its hopes on the steadfastness of the American president. Obama’s victory and the settlement freeze were to show the Israeli public that the refusal policy of Netanyahu was leading to disaster.

But Netanyahu has won, and in a big way. Not only did he survive, not only has he shown that he is no “sucker” (a word he uses all the time), he has proven to his people – and to the public at large – that there is nothing to fear: Obama is nothing but a paper tiger. The settlements can go on expanding without hindrance. Any negotiations that start, if they start at all, can go on until the coming of the Messiah. Nothing will come out of them.

For Netanyahu, the threat of peace has passed. At least for the time being.


IT IS difficult to understand how Obama allowed himself to get into this embarrassing situation.

Machiavelli taught that one should not challenge a lion unless one is able to kill him. And Netanyahu is not even a lion, just a fox.

Why did Obama insist on the settlement freeze – in itself a very reasonable demand – if he was unable to stand his ground? Or, in other words, if he was unable to impose it on Netanyahu?

Before entering into such a campaign, a statesman must weigh up the array of forces: What power is at my disposal? What forces are confronting me? How determined is the other side? What means am I ready to employ? How far am I prepared to go in using my power?

Obama has a host of able advisors, headed by Rahm Emanuel, whose Israeli origins (and name) were supposed to give him special insights. George Mitchell, a hard-nosed and experienced diplomat, was supposed to provide sober assessments. How did they all fail?

Logic would say that Obama, before entering the fray, should have decided which instruments of pressure to employ. The arsenal is inexhaustible – from a threat by the US not to shield the Israeli government with its veto in the Security Council, to delaying the next shipment of arms. In 1992 James Baker, George Bush Sr’s Secretary of State, threatened to withhold American guarantees for Israel’s loans abroad. That was enough to drag even Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid conference.

It seems that Obama was either unable or unwilling to exert such pressures, even secretly, even behind the scenes. This week he allowed the American navy to conduct major joint war-games with the Israeli Air Force.

Some people hoped that Obama would use the Goldstone report to exert pressure on Netanyahu. Just one hint that the US might not use its veto in the Security Council would have sown panic in Jerusalem. Instead, Washington published a statement on the report, dutifully toeing the Israeli propaganda line.

True, it is hard for the US to condemn war crimes that are so similar to those committed by its own soldiers. If Israeli commanders are put on trial in The Hague, American generals may be next in line. Until now, only the losers in wars were indicted. What will the world come to if those who remain in office are also accused?


THE INESCAPABLE conclusion is that Obama’s defeat is the outcome of a faulty assessment of the situation. His advisors, who are considered seasoned politicians, were wrong about the forces involved.

That has happened already in the crucial health insurance debate. The opposition is far stronger than anticipated by Obama’s people. In order to get out of this mess somehow, Obama needs the support of every senator and congressman he can lay his hands on. That automatically strengthens the position of the pro-Israel lobby, which already has immense influence in Congress.

The last thing that Obama needs at this moment is a declaration of war by AIPAC and Co. Netanyahu, an expert on domestic American politics, scented Obama’s weakness and exploited it.

Obama could do nothing but gnash his teeth and fold up.

That debacle is especially painful at this precise point in time. The impression is rapidly gaining ground that he is indeed an inspiring speaker with an uplifting message, but a weak politician, unable to turn his vision into reality. If this view of him firms up, it may cast a shadow over his whole term.


BUT IS Netanyahu’s policy wise from the Israeli point of view?

This may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.

Obama will not disappear. He has three and a half years in office before him, and thereafter perhaps four more. That’s a lot of time to plan revenge for someone hurt and humiliated at a delicate moment, at the beginning of his term of office.

One cannot know, of course, what is happening in the depths of Obama’s heart and in the back of his mind. He is an introvert who keeps his cards close to his chest. His many years as a young black man in the United States have probably taught him to keep his feelings to himself.

He may draw the conclusion, in the footsteps of all his predecessors since Dwight Eisenhower (except Father Bush during Baker’s short stint as hatchet man): Don’t Mess With Israel. With the help of its partners and servants in the US, it can cause grievous harm to any President.

But he may also draw the opposite conclusion: Wait for the right opportunity, when your standing in the domestic arena is solid, and pay Netanyahu back with interest. If that happens, Netanyahu’s air of victory may turn out to be premature.


IF I were asked for advice (not to worry, it won’t happen), I would tell him:

The forging of Israeli-Palestinian peace would mean a historic turnabout, a reversal of a 120 year old trend. That is not an easy operation, not to be undertaken lightly. It is not a matter for diplomats and secretaries. It demands a determined leader with a stout heart and a steady hand. If one is not ready for it, one should not even start.

An American President who wants to undertake such a role must formulate a clear and detailed peace plan, with a strict timetable, and be prepared to invest all his resources and all his political capital in its realization. Among other things, he must be ready to confront, face to face, the powerful pro-Israel lobby. 

This will not succeed unless public opinion in Israel, Palestine, the Arab world, the United States and the whole world is thoroughly prepared well in advance. It will not succeed without an effective Israeli peace movement, without strong support from US public opinion, especially Jewish-American opinion, without a strong Palestinian leadership and without Arab unity.

At the appropriate moment, the President of the United States must come to Jerusalem and address the Israeli public from the Knesset rostrum, like Anwar Sadat and President Jimmy Carter before him, as well as the Palestinian parliament, like President Bill Clinton.

I don’t know if  Obama is the man. Some in the peace camp have already given up on him, which effectively means that they have despaired of peace as such. I am not ready for this. One battle rarely decides a war, and one mistake does not foretell the future. A lost battle can steel the loser, a mistake can teach a valuable lesson.

IN ONE of his essays, Karl Marx said that when history repeats itself: The first time it is as tragedy, the second time it is as farce.

The 2000 threefold summit meeting at Camp David was high drama. Many hopes were pinned on it, success seemed to be within reach, but in the end it collapsed, with the participants blaming each other.

The 2009 Waldorf-Astoria summit was the farce.

"Fraying at the edges...."

"Richard Goldstone, former judge of South Africa's Constitutional Court, the first prosecutor at The Hague on behalf of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, and anti-apartheid campaigner reports that he was most reluctant to take on the job of chairing the United Nations fact-finding mission charged with investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the three week Gaza war of last winter. 

Goldstone explains that his reluctance was due to the issue being "deeply charged and politically loaded," and was overcome only because he and his fellow commissioners were "professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation," adding that "above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war," as well as the duty to protect civilians to the extent possible in combat zones."

Quote from The Goldstone report and the battle for legitimacy by Richard Falk in The Electronic Intifada, 22 September 2009.

It is folks such as Richard Goldstone stepping up as leaders with integrity and honesty that make me think human cloning isn't such a "slippery-slope" technology after all! Thank you Mr. Goldstone...I only wish there were a few more of you sprinkled in various other cabinets and administrations  (and, since I'm on a roll imagining good things that could happen, that if there were more of you, you'd all speak up before invasions, occupations, and wholesale cultural destruction).


Now to keep an eye on how this all pans out. We will almost certainly NOT see Israel in the ICC... and we most certainly are seeing, as Falk writes, "the solidity of Jewish support for Israel ...fraying at the edges".
Dare I say that this is not just Jewish support but also the support of other important communities too. Falk continues that support will, "likely now fray much further."

To be "even-handed" and "fair and balanced", a good case can be made that there's a place on the ICC docket for ALL the architects of the invasion of Iraq too. I interviewed former Iraq Ambassador to UK during the lead up to war last week. Dr. Mudhaffar Al-Amin describes eloquently his struggle to persuade the Brits to avoid war. Alas, he quickly realized that avoiding the war was not the point. Listen to that showed archived right here.

Enough of the bitchin'...

Next week on my radio show, Raising Sand Radio, I'll air an interview with Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project. Daniel will discuss AFRICOM as it is currently constituted ....

One thing Volman says that resonates with me is that many of the US military brass that he has talked to about AFRICOM agree that it leaves a lot to be desired.

For example, there are many war scenarios and exercises regularly conducted over US air space. (Think back to 9/11/2001... VP Cheney said that it took so long for air traffic controllers and USAF to align because of military exercises conducted over DC that day. I'm not suggesting anything fishy, just reminding ....) At any rate, these continue and in a recent batch of military exercises earlier this year, military brass began to realize that certain contingencies were simply not dealt with at all. This because they cannot be solved militarily. I'll not go into it here - listen to the show - but what stuck with me is how little many of those in the military want to commit our youth to war when contingencies are ignored.

Then there is the other side: the "chicken hawks" like Rumsfeld  (who, btw, was instrumental in AFRICOM) who can't wait to get our youth into war (remember "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want"?) ...and "bring 'em on" Bush (remember "mission accomplished"?)

Life is so much easier when the "bad guys" are easy to identify and one can, sans guilt, pick a side and stay with it rather than have to think through all the complexity and "flip flop". (I'm in favor of flip-flopping when accompanied by well thought out and articulated reasons to do so.)

All this to say that I (sort of) repudiate my last posting (below titled "It's happening again..and again...) ...that I feel bad that I felt bad about our collective failure...and that I'm ready to stop feelin' bad and "fight back" again. So, I'll be at the next boring meeting bringing creative thinking instead of downer energy. See you there?


BTW, this week's radio show presents Dr. Michael Parenti on acculturation and assimilation and IAVA's Patrick Campbell on the New GI Bill.
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Another excellent move by the Yes Men on the NY Post - watch the editor of the actual NY Post decry Yes Men propaganda.

it's happening again...and again...and again...and....

Einstein said, "You cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created them."

Pres Obama has even used Einstein's aphorism in his speeches. Turns out the prez is more of a motivational speaker than a transformative leader. For he and all the other American politicians and civic leaders with any clout continue to follow the same tired old, inept, deadly pattern: same jargon, same bickering, same lame old politics...same old urgings to consumers to "spend our way out of debt" while bailing out the "too big to fail" institutions, spending enormous sums on war, and ignoring the worldwide climate crises....

Meanwhile, members of "the peace movement" continue to meet, discuss, strategize, and carry signs in the street. Our strategies are so old and tired that they've even trickled down to the "the right" - who is using them quite successfully for the time being. What more glaring indication that new and creative directions are needed than "the right" - aka "the right wing nuts" -- emulating progressive tactics and getting 60,000 or 70,000 protesters into the street in short order? (True, these numbers are disputed...but 60,000 to 70,000 are the low end of the scale. The accusation that 'the right wing media' inflated the numbers - another post-street protest cliche - is missing the point. When was the last time 60,000 to 70,000 war protesters showed up in San Francisco?)

Robert Fisk addresses this theme in his article, ""Everyone seems to be agreeing with bin Laden these days". He closes, "More troops will not guarantee success in Afghanistan," failed Republican contender and ex-Vietnam vet John McCain told us this week. "But a failure to send them will be a guarantee of failure." How Osama must have chuckled as this preposterous announcement echoed around al-Qa'ida's dark cave.

Parsing "Failure"

I don't have the energy to attend strategy meetings anymore. I'm tired of the same old thing: just figuring out a date for the meeting takes a week of emails going back and forth about why the various potential attendees cannot make that date. Finding a venue is tough. Tallying who will or will not show up then fretting about changing dates and venues to accommodate changes goes on for more weeks. Finally, about a third of those confirmed actually show up...to find a sub-meeting already occurred somewhere else and all the significant decisions have been made.

How is this different from meetings held in corporate or bureaucratic workplaces? Both are showpieces to present roles and get "buy in" rather than practices in democracy.

And, yes, I feel bad about all of this. I feel bad about myself. I feel bad feeling bad. I feel bad that I recognize that "the peace movement" - or the anti-war movement - is a failure... and I feel bad that I sound blaming when I admit our failure to hardworking "comrades".

We, the People are stuck in our individualized, atomized worlds.

Alas! A change of consciousness is needed...but how? And who? And when?

It's happening again...or, the truth will out

In Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" Launcelot says:
Well, old man, I will tell you news of
your son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son
may, but at the length truth will out.

August 24th, one of the premier US mainstream newspapers, the New York Times, presented the headline, "Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?"

The article suggests that Obama's presidency ought perhaps to be compared to that of Lyndon B. Johnson.

To be sure, the L.B.J. model - a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad - is one that haunts Mr. Obama's White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.

Then on August 22, in Columbus, GA. former Lt William Calley of the infamous My Lai Massacre stood in front of a gathering at the Kiwanis Club and spoke publicly for the first time about that massacre in Vietnam on March. 16, 1968.

Forty years later, Calley said: "There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai...I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."
(See a more nuanced and thoughtful piece in The Lede.)

Indeed, the truth will out.

Deborah Nelson, author of The War Behind Me uncovered evidence that, in fact, My Lai was only the most publicized of the American-perpetrated atrocities that occurred in Vietnam.

I contend, in my own book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, that, as long as we continue with the atrocity that is war, we will continue to have events such as My Lai in Vietnam, the bombing of refugees in UN facilities as in Qana, Lebanon, Mutla Ridge and Nissour Square in Iraq, the slaughter in Gaza in 2008-09 - and this is just contemporary history!

Put armed men in situations where they're angry, fearful, far from home, un-acculturated, psychologically traumatized, and ideological prepared to think in binary "us vs. them" modes and atrocities are guaranteed.

Sure, we can finger a fall guy or two (or gal as in Lindy England's case) but the whole mess resides on the shoulders of those who create policies that inevitably lead to war, valorize weaponry, and evolve financial systems that depend on arms manufacturing and selling.

And us...the ordinary Joe-in-the-street who allows it to happen and beats the drums of war with the rhetoric of patriotism and exceptionalism and "civilization" and so on...

Since we're all of us guilty for some of this, none of us is guilty for all of it.

Yet, "at the length truth will out." I only hope that we survive the madness of war in the meantime.

Listen to my radio show this week on how the Armenian genocide plays out in this political arena.

It's the System, Stupid!

Remember the days of, "It's the Economy, Stupid!" and political parties called KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid!"?

Here is another: It's the System, Stupid!
The writers of the following letters haven't yet realized that the American Dream is really a System to Milk All but the most greedy and ego-maniacal of the fruits of her/his labor.
While American ideology promotes The Individual as the ultimate in human evolution The System actually divides and conquers and makes the individual feel as if/believe s/he is responsible for not having a job, that her/his life is simply a product of her/his "hard work."
Instead, we humans are social beings longing to contribute to one another
Alas, today this longing is denigrated as "Socialism"...the newest "-ism" used as a psychological baseball bat to mug us in broad daylight.
Read it and weep.
"I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong"

Rallying the (storm)troopers?

At Ali Abuminah's recommendation on my Facebook page I read Lizzy Ratner's blog posting. It is, as he suggests, a thoughtful essay that concludes:

- Instead of tours that whisk young people from Auschwitz to Israel, I would like to see trips that go from the Warsaw ghetto to the Jabaliya refugee camp.

- In place of a Jewish mainstream that looks only – and mistakenly – to Israel for its identity, I would like to see Jews who reach across time and space, to old countries and new countries, for a sense of who they are – and might be.

- ...[I would like to] see the true lessons of “never again” enshrined in a single, consummately-inclusive Israeli-Palestinian state....

In return, I recommend Andrew Bacevich's blog piece, "Farewell, The End of the American Century." (The text is a transcript of the included video clip.) To progressives, Bacevich is airing ideas that have been our guiding principles for some time. Yet to his audience these ideas are revolutionary. It is revolutionary to call for a public admission that We the People have been propagandized with the nomenclature of Freedom and Democracy to perpetrate deeds whose results are the polar opposite of freedom and democracy. For some, to seek the admission that "the greatest" anything (father, mother, teacher, or history book) makes mistakes is revolutionary. For others, to admit that the "the greatest country in the world" made -- and continues to make -- mistakes is almost beyond revolutionary...it flirts with treason!

It is dizzying just thinking of the ensuing chaos as the concentric layers of different communities within the American frame of reference accept such admissions!

Ratner's and Bacevich's pieces have in common the underlying assumptions that recognizing and acknowledging past mistakes is essential to re-orienting the planet's current disastrous trajectory to one that is more just, equitable, and sustainable. The other assumptions are that a "we" exists ...and that that "we" can come to a common understanding about why and how we went off course... and that we can agree upon why and how we might re-orient.

I appreciate the need to surface and acknowledge these assumptions; and implementing them is easier said than done. Just a cursory scan of today's "mainstream" and/or "alternative" media's reporting on the state of American health care plans suggests how difficult it is to even broach these assumptions (that there is, #1, a "we" who can, #2, recognize and acknowledge mistakes and, #3, re-orient, and #4, that something "just", "equitable" and "sustainable" could, or should, exist).

For the sake of simplicity, let's remain within the American frame of reference and imagine, if you can, the majority of current Republican leaders accepting that there are any assumptions to examine...and if there are, that there is a need to admit they're unjust and inequitable.

Not easy to imagine, is it? Indeed, that party appears increasingly unhinged and incapable of anything other than whipping up their stormtroopers' emotions. (As an aside, is the messaging coming out of folks like Limbaugh and Gingrich and Palin expected to rally their base? If so, then their base consists solely of two extremes: a mob of Joe-the-Plumbers on one end -- wanna-be-rich, wanna-be-celebrity, and intellectually under-endowed -- and a mob of Bushies on the other -- already obscenely rich, over-privileged, and intellectually under-endowed.) Instead of functioning from political pragmatism, that party seems to be operating from a shrill ideological mono-culture whose driving force is "I can drink the Koolaid faster than you" powered by the fear of scarcity. Is there anything the Republican leadership wouldn't say, nothing they wouldn't do, to sabotage Obama no matter what he says and does? (While I'm not thrilled with Obama's direction at least the man appears mostly sane and appears to be working toward a more sane future given the political realities. Frankly, his central vision is flawed: "we" cannot save ourselves with more shopping. The era of capitalism and consumerism is over...instead of politicians, "we" need visionaries able to implement sustainable futures.)

Now, imagine the ensuring complexity if we broaden American assumptions and frames of reference to include European assumptions and frames of reference. Now add, say, the Arab world's assumptions and frames of reference. Then, the Asian, and African, the Native American worlds' and cultural frames of reference. Dizzying, eh?


Lizzy Ratner and Andrew Bacevich are offering something along the lines of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee. That was something unique in the world. It succeeded in putting some new concepts and operating principles on the sociopolitical map. And, it has not been able to forward them in any practical, consistent, and lasting way. Many still point to the TRC as an example to emulate - progressive Israelis particularly like to do this - but its real contribution is not that it accomplished tangible changes. This was not due to lack of trying but because revolutionary ideas need time to soak into the sociopolitical culture.

The TRC's overarching and lasting accomplishment was allowing -- then popularizing -- a new nomenclature of reconciliation.

Humankind simply does not evolve simultaneously en masse -- especially when those who benefit from chaos rely on the the very dumb...and for whom the very word "evolution" is taboo -- to maintain the status quo.

New ideas need time to soak into old cultures...and new language makes this possible. This takes time...and a critical mass of patient individuals introducing new ideas via a new language. Ratner and Bacevich come at this work from different angles. More importantly they represent two variants of a consistent, passionate, and courageous cohort committed to forwarding and popularizing a new nomenclature of reconciliation.

It may take another century or at least another generation or two to enact reconciliation but, with hard work and lots of luck, even the Republican Party will change; it will have to....