For anyone who wonders why so many people around the world criticize American and Israeli foreign policy and militarism, this has been a valuable learning week. I refer to the U.S. [1] Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be the next U.S. defense secretary, and the twin Israeli attacks against military targets in Syria.
The juxtaposition of these two events clarifies again two core trends in American and Israeli foreign policy: their insistence that they are above international law and can use their military anytime, anywhere in the world, if they feel this serves their security interests, regardless of the credibility of the evidence to justify their attacks; and, the unwritten rule that American policies in the Middle East [1] should conform above all else to the dictates of Israel, before considering the interests of the U.S. itself or the nearly 600 million other people who live in the Middle East.
My gut reaction to watching some of the Hagel confirmation hearings is to thank the American Founding Fathers for implementing the doctrine of the separation of powers and checks-and-balances among the different branches of government. For if some of the ideological zealots, intellectual wrecks, and pro-Israel [1] songbirds who sit on the Senate foreign relations committee were ever to assume executive power, the world would be a much more violent and dangerous place.
The manner in which some Republican and Democratic senators hammered away at Hagel for his past statements on the Iraq [1] war, Israel and Iran only exacerbated long-held and widespread worldwide concerns, which I share, about how the U.S. unilaterally uses its military power around the world. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 – doubly criminal for not being sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council and for being based on lies and false evidence – was a major point of contention at the hearings, especially whether Hagel thought the 2007 “surge” in American troops was a success or not.
The senators largely ignored the much more important evaluation of the consequences of the war on Iraq and its neighbors today, including the shaky unity and stability of the country, Iraq’s transformation into the biggest generator of militants and terrorists since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the millions of refugees, and many other problems still plaguing the country and that have often spilled over to our entire region.
The premise behind the questions of the anti-Hagel senators was that the U.S. was right to invade Iraq, and that the war deserved the full, unquestioning support of every senator and every American. By extension, Washington could use its military with impunity around the world, as it is doing now with its drones serving as assassination squads. Hagel was one of the few officials who had the courage to speak out against some of these moves, and to question the wisdom of the 2007 surge and other aspects of that war.
The link here with Israeli actions is clear and troubling. Israel, like the U.S., claims the right to use its military or assassination squads to attack, destroy and kill any person or facility anywhere in the world, if it feels that such actions would enhance Israel’s security. Its history of such attacks is long, and continuing. Israelis claim that they attacked Syrian targets in order to prevent the transfer of sophisticated missiles from Syria [1] to Hezbollah and cripple a plant that could have produced non-conventional weapons. Only the Israeli suspicion of these things was required to carry out the attacks, and the Israelis will not be held accountable before international law.
This kind of loose cannon militarism combined with gangland foreign policy principles contradicts and discredits the extensive talk by Israeli and American officials of their commitment to democracy and the rule of law, which they use as a major justification for both their foreign policy conduct and their self-proclaimed exemplary status in the pantheon of nations. Their dilemma, however, is that the actual pantheon of nations, unlike their imagined world, sees American-Israeli assassinations and unbridled militarism as largely going against international legal principles of permissible self-defense, and also as counterproductive in many cases.
Such American-Israeli behavior tends only to generate new and greater political opposition to the U.S. and Israel, and active resistance to them in some cases, while badly denting their respect among large swaths of people the world. It is no surprise, therefore, that many global polls indicate that the U.S. and Israel are seen as among the top security threats to the rest of the world – not just because they kill, destroy and create lasting havoc as they wish, but also because of their colonial-like arrogance in justifying their right to do this at will, so that the human rights and rule of law of anyone who is not an American or an Israeli-Zionist hawk be damned.
Front Page Features