February 02, 2013
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. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Chuck Hagel’s
nomination to be the next U.S. Secretary of Defense, 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
they use to justify their attacks; and, the unwritten rule that American
policies in the Middle East should conform above all else to the dictates of
Israel, before considering the interests of the United States itself or the 700
million other people who live in the Middle East.
My gut
reaction to watching some of the Senate’s 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 songbirds who sit on the 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 positions or past statements on the Iraq war, Israel and Iran only
exacerbates long held and widespread worldwide concerns, which I share, about
how the United States unilaterally uses its military power around the world.
The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- doubly criminal for not being
sanctioned by the UN 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 full
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,
millions of refugees, and many other problems that still plague the country and
have often spilled over to our entire region.
The
premise behind the anti-Hagel senators is that the United States was right to
invade Iraq, that the war deserved the full, unquestioning support of every
senator and every American, and, by extension, that Washington could use its military
with impunity, as it desired, around the world, as it is doing now with its
drones 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 United
States, 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 to Hezbollah and
to 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 totally 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 predominantly counter-productive in many cases.
Such
American-Israeli behavior tends only to generate new and greater political
opposition to the United States and Israel, and active resistance to them in
some cases, while badly denting their respect among large swaths of the world.
It is no surprise, therefore, that many global polls indicate that the United
States 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, and the human rights and rule of law of anyone who is
not an American or an Israeli-Zionist hawk be damned.
Rami
G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright
© 2013 Rami G. Khouri -- distributed by Agence Global