(ANTI MEDIA) Israel lacks a
national motto. If its leaders are looking for a Latin one, “carpe chaos” would
be an apt and honest choice.
“Seize the chaos” is half of Israeli foreign policy in a nutshell (the other
half being the instigation of that chaos in the first place). Indeed, even its
friends in the media cannot help but put it in such terms. For example, The New
York Times recently reported about the “…many Israeli leaders and thinkers
seizing on the chaos in Syria to solidify Israel’s hold on Golan.”
This refers to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and
has occupied ever since. Even the Israel-enabling United Nations considers that
occupation and subsequent annexation to be unjust and illegal. Returning Golan
to Syria has long been advanced as part of a potential peace deal.
But now, Israel is using the civil war in Syria as an excuse to expand
settlements in the Golan Heights; a senior minister wants 100,000 new residents
in the next five years. Its potential uses are manifold: “The 400-plus square
miles of the Israeli-controlled Golan on the northeast border with Syria is both
strategic plateau and lush agricultural terrain yielding prize apples, cherries
and beef. It is also a vast playground that drew 3 million tourist visits last
year.”
This is Israel’s usual M.O. in the Palestinian West Bank as well: forging ahead
with illicit settlements to establish “realities on the ground” that will be
hard to reverse, thereby fixing the occupation permanently in place.
Advocates of the new Golan settlements defend them by citing the chaos in Syria:
“With Syria ‘disintegrating’ after years of civil war, they argue, it is hard to
imagine a stable state to which the territory could be returned.”
The Times quotes Israeli MP Michael Oren who adds a blatant lebensraumargument
to the case for good measure: “We need places to build, and the world doesn’t
want us to build in the West Bank. I don’t think anyone in the world can come at
us and say we’re building on land that’s going to be part of a peace deal if we
build on the Golan Heights.”
“Seize the chaos” is not a new doctrine: neither is it limited to Israeli halls
of power. A veritable “carpe chaos” manifesto was written in 1996 for a
Washington think tank by David Wurmser, an Israel-first neocon (but I repeat
myself) who would later play a key role in the Bush administration’s drive to
the Iraq War: advising Dick Cheney in the Vice President’s Office, assisting
John Bolton at the State Department, and fabricating fanciful “connections”
between Iraq and Al Qaeda at the Department of Defense.
In “Coping with Crumbling States: A Western and Israeli Balance of Power
Strategy for the Levant,” Wurmser made a case for “limiting and expediting the
chaotic collapse” of the Baathist governments in Iraq and Syria.
Wurmser predicted that “Baathism’s days are numbered,” due to its own inherent
failings as a stable basis for statehood. Indeed, he argued, Arab nationalism in
general was unsuitable for the Arab people, given their particularist and tribal
tendencies. Therefore, its adoption can only condemn Arab countries to forever
“fluctuate between repression and anarchy.”
In particular, the Gulf War had “accelerated Iraq’s descent into internal
chaos.” To Wurmser, this made the Middle East of 1996 resemble Europe of 1914.
Just before World War I, the Ottoman Empire had long been dubbed “the sick man
of Europe.” Its imminent demise was beyond doubt; what was in question was who
would get to despoil its corpse.
In 1996 Iraq was “the sick man of the Middle East.” Wurmser predicted that,
after the inevitable downfall of its ruler Saddam Hussein, Iraq would be
dominated either by the Baathist regime in Syria or the “Hashemite” royal house
in Jordan.
He characterized Iraq not as any serious threat to Israel or the West but as
“the prize” in a Middle Eastern game of thrones:
“The prize itself is more powerful than any of the neighbors that covet it.
Iraq, a nation of 18 million, occupies some of the most strategically important
and well-endowed territories of the Middle East.”
Wurmser called for the West and Israel to help the Hashemite monarch of Jordan
win this game of thrones by enthroning one of his kin as king of Iraq. He
advanced what he termed Jordan’s “Hashemite option for Iraq” as a far superior
alternative to a Syrian-dominated continuation of Baathist Arab nationalism. The
former, he averred, is “more solid and traditional,” and:
“The Hashemites alone are adept enough in forging strong tribal, familial and
clan alliances to create viable nations in the Levant.”
Of course Wurmser’s amateur sociological analysis is poppycock, and the real
advantage the neocons saw in the “Hashemite option” was that the royal house of
Jordan is obedient to Israel because it is a wholly-owned western client
completely dependent on the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid the
US feeds it every year.
Indeed, Wurmser hinted at this real reason when he argued that, if Iraq were to
go Hashemite:
“…then Syria would be isolated and surrounded by a new pro-western
Jordanian-Israeli-Iraqi-Turkish bloc…”
Thus isolated, Baathist Syria’s own inevitable “chaotic collapse” could then be
“expedited.” And the expanded pro-western bloc could:
“…contain and manage… the scope of the coming chaos in Iraq and most probably in
Syria.”
This was the “balance of power strategy” Wurmser proposed for the West and
Israel, to replace the despised:
“…quest for ‘comprehensive peace — including its ‘land for peace’ provision,
with Syria.”
Nineteen years later, Wurmser must now be elated that the Golan Heights are, as
discussed above, being taken off the table for any future “land for peace” deals
thanks to his hoped-for chaotic collapse in Syria.
In fact, mere months before he wrote “Coping with Crumbling States,” Wurmser
made the case for implacable antagonism toward Syria as a preferred alternative
to returning Golan in particular:
“Given the nature of the regime in Damascus, it is both natural and moral that
Israel abandon the slogan ‘comprehensive peace’ and move to contain Syria,
drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program, and rejecting
‘land for peace’ deals on the Golan Heights.”
Wurmser wrote this in the infamous policy paper “A Clean Break: A New Strategy
for Securing the Realm,” which was addressed, not to Washington, but to Tel Aviv
(indicating his true loyalties).
In “A Clean Break,” Wurmser even more expressly made the case for outright
regime change in Iraq as a “means” of “weakening, containing, and even rolling
back Syria.” (This in turn was imperative because, “Syria challenges Israel on
Lebanese soil.”)
“A Clean Break” was written under the auspices of a “study group” headed by
Wurmser’s mentor Richard Perle and including fellow Perle-protege Douglas Feith.
This is extremely significant because Perle and Feith, like Wurmser, also played
key roles in the Bush administration’s war drive.
For more details on both the “Lebanese connection” mentioned above and the role
of the “Clean Breakers” in starting the Iraq War, see my essay, “Clean Break to
Dirty Wars.”
Indeed, it is Washington’s Israeli-occupied foreign policy that has enabled
Israel’s “seize the chaos” doctrine by using America’s vast imperial might to
create so much seizable chaos in the first place.
As it turned out, Iraq was not nearly as mired in mayhem or blundering toward
the brink as Wurmser judged in 1996. At the dawn of the 21st century, Saddam was
as firmly ensconced in power as ever. So much for Wurmser as a geopolitical
analyst.
This posed a problem. There was no chance of “expediting” a “chaotic collapse”
that wasn’t there; a process has to exist first before it can be accelerated. So
Wurmser and the other neocons in the Bush administration had to cook up a
collapse from scratch themselves.
And it took a full-scale invasion and occupation by a global superpower to make
this particular Leninist “omelet,” at the cost of a prodigious amount of “broken
eggs”: 4,425 American lives and $1.7 trillion.
But the neocons and Israel finally did get their longed for chaotic collapse in
Iraq, along with the deaths of over a million Iraqis and the displacement of
millions more. This blood-soaked business is what they call “statecraft.”
Yet, even then, the best laid plans of the neocons and Likudniks still
completely failed to pan out.
In both of his seminal strategy documents of 1996, Wurmser imagined that if the
Hashemites were installed in Iraq, they could use their influence with a certain
prominent cleric there to turn the Shiites of Syria and Lebanon against Assad,
Iran, and Hezbollah.
And the “Coping” report envisioned a supporting role in that project for Ahmed
Chalabi, identified by Wurmser as “one of the most prominent of the Iraqi
opposition figures to Saddam” and “himself a Shiite and a close, long-time
Hashemite confidant.” Wurmser further anticipated that:
“…pro-Jordan Iraq Shiites as Ahmed Chalabi… would define the Iraqi Shiite
community after Saddam’s removal.”
By the Iraq War, the neocons had given up on outright enthroning a Hashemite in
Baghdad. It’s one thing to coordinate something like that from behind the
scenes, but installing a royal despot through a high-profile American war would
have made for unacceptably bad press for Washington.
So Perle and Company settled for a “democratic” “Hashemite option.” In this Plan
B, “Hashemite confidant” Ahmed Chalabi graduated from a supporting to a leading
role in Israel’s plan for the new Iraq.
Chalabi had long delighted the neocons by feeding Washington bogus
“intelligence” on Iraqi weapons that eventually helped to the US
invasion. On the basis of this rapport, Chalabi assured the neocons that, as a
leading light in “democratic” Iraq, he would steer state policy in Israel’s
favor. The neocons even swallowed his pledge to build a pipeline for them from
Iraq’s oilfields to an Israeli refinery and port.
None of Chalabi’s promises ever manifested. As it turned out, Chalabi was just
as much an agent of Iran (enemy to both Saddam and Israel) as he was a
“Hashemite confidant.” For more details on this, see the amazing article, “How
Ahmed Chalabi Conned the Neocons.”
The neocons and Israel got their war and collapse in Iraq, but it blew up in
their faces. The new US-armed Iraqi government, as well as the Shiite militias
that do most of its fighting, became dominated, not by loyal Jordan, but by
hated Iran. Oops.
And after the war, the neocons were faced, not with Wurmser’s anticipated
“Jordanian-Israeli-Iraqi-Turkish bloc,” but what they perceive as an anti-Israel
“Shia crescent” including Iran, Iraq, Syria, and (most importantly) Hezbollah in
Lebanon. Far from being isolated, Syria seemed to have more friends than ever.
Oops.
But Israel sure as hell wasn’t going to leave bad enough alone. Where the
subtleties of neocon “strategists” miserably failed, Israel’s influence over the
sheer wealth and brute power of the US empire (what Wurmser has called its “raw
capability”) would have to make up the difference once again.
So for the sake of Israel, and since at least 2007, Washington, along with its
regional allies, has been waging a broad covert proxy war to undermine the “Shia
crescent.” This policy pivot, which legendary journalist Seymour Hersh dubbed
“The Redirection,” has involved supporting Sunni Islamist mujahideen in Lebanon,
Syria, and Iran.
Then, after the 2011 “Arab Spring” of popular uprisings reached Syria, “The
Redirection” went into overdrive. The US-led regional coalition (Turkey, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc) has been strenuously trying to overthrow the Syrian
regime of Bashar al-Assad since at least 2012 by heavily sponsoring an
insurgency led by jihadists including Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Israel has also been contributing to the cause of chaos more directly. Like a
prizefighter’s “cutman,” the Israeli military has stood in Al Qaeda’s corner,
taking in its wounded terrorist “rebels,” patching them up, and thensending them
back into Syria to resume fighting.
In Syria too, the neocons and Israel have finally seen their longed for chaotic
collapse, to the tune of a quarter of a million Syrian deaths and millions more
displaced (many fleeing to Europe or drowning en route).
As discussed above, Israel has seized on the chaos it has unleashed on its
northern neighbor as an excuse for expanding settlements in the Golan Heights.
Moreover, whenever that chaos even slightly spills over into Golan, Israel has
been seizing that as a pretext for still more war.
Syrian soldiers are desperately battling Al Qaeda just north of Golan. Whenever
a shell strays into the Heights (almost always exploding harmlessly in some
unoccupied field), Israel responds by bombing Syrian military positions, thus
effectively serving as Al Qaeda’s air force as well as its combat medic.
It does this regardless of (and generally clueless as to) who actually fired the
offending projectile: whether it was the Syrian army, Al Qaeda, or any other
faction. As CBS News related in a report of recent such strikes:
“Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said in a statement that
Israel holds the Syrian military ‘responsible and accountable for any aggression
emanating from Syria.’”
Israel’s self-righteously sociopathic behavior toward Syria and the Golan
Heights beggars belief. It’s like some wealthy homeowner taking over his poor
neighbor’s backyard and then sending a gang of crazed ruffians to invade his
home. Then in the ensuing brawl, when something crashes through the neighbor’s
window onto the seized yard, the land thief yells from a balcony, “Why can’t you
get your house in order!” and fires at him with a shotgun. Then the thief walks
back to his room muttering to himself, “What a hopeless basket case! How
I’mdefinitely not giving him back his yard.”
What makes it especially incredible is that the ruffians in the real-life
scenario are Al Qaeda and ISIS. But from the twisted perspective of Israel and
the neocons, it makes perfect sense.
Even way back in 1996, Wurmser was already stressing in his “Coping” report that
Arab nationalism must be considered enemy number one, and that Islamic
fundamentalism was only a distant second.
Wurmser flat-out rejected any pragmatic detente with the Baathists, even for the
sake of having a “bulwark” against the spread of radical Islam. He despised any
such “peace process” as “prop[ping] up secular-Arab nationalism in its crumbling
weakness.” He contended that such a policy is:
“…anchored to the belief that [secular-Arab nationalism] can be “reformed”
enough to be resurrected as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. Yet, one
of the main strategic objectives of the peace process is to perpetuate Levantine
secular-Arab nationalist regimes. Indeed, the previous Israeli government
believed that, “[Israel’s] role is to protect the existing regimes, to prevent
or halt the process of radicalization, and to block the expansion of fundamental
religious zealotry.”
But the present study… shows that the pursuit of comprehensive peace and the
effort to harness secular-Arab nationalist regimes such as Syria’s in the battle
to stem the fundamentalist tide is not only futile. It is also a dangerous
strategic misstep.”
Wurmser argued that US support for secular Arab-nationalist Iraq in its brutal
invasion of fundamentalist Iran in the 1980s was “an explosive mistake,” as
Iraq’s subsequent “rogue” invasion of Kuwait demonstrated. And so:
“The same lesson should now be applied to Syria. It is in both Israel’s and the
West’s interest to expedite the demise of secular-Arab nationalism. (…) The
pursuit of the peace process is preventing this.”
Secular-Arab nationalism, Wurmser insisted, is nothing but an “obstacle” to
introducing better defenses against and alternatives to fundamentalism, and to
“more healthy future” for the Arab world.
“The West and its local friends must engage fundamentalism with better
associates than Baathists.”
Such thinking would seem to explain the otherwise baffling tendency of today’s
policy makers in Washington and Tel Aviv to stubbornly insist on the overthrow
of one secular-Arab nationalist regime after another — Saddam in Iraq, Gaddafi
in Libya, and now Assad in Syria — even though it invariably leads to explosive
growth for extreme Islamist groups in membership, might, and conquests.
Yet, one would expect the 9/11 attacks to have pulled the rug out from under
this rationale. Aren’t the 9/11 attacks why the US is raining bombs throughout
the Muslim world in the first place? And secular-Arab nationalists didn’t knock
down the Twin Towers; Islamic fundamentalists did.
Even ignoring the crucial issues of empire and blowback, and taking militaristic
“offense as the best defense” premises for granted, shouldn’t Islamist terror
organizations — which have actually attacked American cities — be menace number
one, and secular-Arab nationalist states — which have never dared — be at most a
distant second?
And so, especially after 9/11, wouldn’t creating “jihadist wonderlands”
throughout the Middle East by decapitating the secular-Arab nationalist regimes
that are the jihadists’ chief mortal enemies be the last thing our government
should do? Especially when one of the groups thriving the most amid the chaos is
Al Qaeda, the very perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks?
Not from Israel’s perspective. Michael Oren (the lebensraum-loving Israeli
official mentioned above) has made it crystal clear that Wurmser’s priorities
are still official state policy. In 2013, at the end of his tenure as Israeli
ambassador to the US, Oren delivered this parting message through The Jerusalem
Post:
“‘The initial message about the Syrian issue was that we always wanted
[President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t
backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,’ he said.
This was the case, he said, even if the other ‘bad guys’ were affiliated to
al-Qaida.
‘We understand that they are pretty bad guys,’ he said, adding that this
designation did not apply to everyone in the Syrian opposition. “Still, the
greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to
Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc.
That is a position we had well before the outbreak of hostilities in Syria. With
the outbreak of hostilities we continued to want Assad to go.’”
Then in 2014, just after ISIS advanced through Iraq to Mosul and declared itself
a Caliphate, Oren said this regarding the conflict between the Shiite-led
government of Syria and the Sunni extremists overrunning eastern Syria and
western Iraq:
“From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail,
let the Sunni evil prevail.”
Lest he be misunderstood, by “Sunni evil” Oren is here specifically referring to
ISIS. This is clear, because seconds before, he conveyed his recognition of the
fact that they are indeed “bad guys” by referring to a specific mass-execution
that ISIS had just committed.
That is Israel’s position. “Assad must go. We prefer Al Qaeda. Let ISIS
prevail.”
In other words: “To hell with your towers, America. And your big city residents
can go to hell too, where they can burn along with the Syrian victims of Al
Qaeda and ISIS for all I care. Israel has its own regional strategic goals to
think of. Now get back to work to pay your taxes so your government can keep
decimating Muslim countries for me and my power clique and keep sending us
billions of dollars in foreign aid.”
This from “America’s greatest friend in the Middle East.”
Israel would have preferred to have the Levant ruled by stable sock puppets of
the West. But failing that, it would much rather be surrounded by an
extremist-stricken Muslim maelstrom of mutual massacres than to have in its
neighborhood even a single secular-Arab nationalist state with an independent
rational leadership, a steady tax base, and a disciplined military.
And for 14 years, Washington has been adopting Israel’s perspective on this
question with incredible fidelity. And as a recently-released government
intelligence document revealed, it has done so knowing full well that it would
likely result in the Levant being overrun by America-hating Islamic terrorists.
And thus it is demonstrated that the only enemy of the American people greater
than Israel’s government is our own.
David Wurmser warned that if the West did not adopt his warlike strategic
vision, it:
“…will still not get peace. Instead it will look beyond Israel’s borders at
secular-Arab nationalism’s final legacy: a chaotic sea… (which will painfully
intrude on the West)…”
The West has indeed adopted the neocon/Israeli strategy, precipitating the
“chaotic collapse” of secular-Arab nationalism in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. But
the chaos has not been “contained and managed” as Wurmser anticipated. Neither
has it cleared the way for “a more healthy future” as he promised.
Instead it has created exactly what Wurmser said it would prevent: a “chaotic
sea” immersing the entire Middle East and “painfully intrud[ing] on the West.”
That chaotic sea is even lapping up onto the shores of Europe in the form of the
refugee crisis.
And now that Russia has been drawn into the Syrian war, where its bombers and
troops operate at cross purposes with American bombers and proxy fighters, the
chaotic sea threatens to become a thermonuclear lake of fire engulfing the whole
world.
Israel may eventually see every secular-Arab nationalist regime that defies it
fall. It may yet see Assad die in some humiliating way, just as it saw Saddam
hanged before a jeering crowd and Gaddafi sodomized in the street. It may also
finally see American bombs raining down on Tehran.
Israeli troops may once again march upon Beirut, and this time see every
important member of Hezbollah executed or buried under a prison. (It’s extremely
unlikely, but it’s conceivable.) It may then have total sway over Lebanon and
untrammeled access to all its natural resources (including the coveted Litani
River).
Israel may never have to give the Palestinians freedom, restitution, or peace.
And it may never have to give up any of its territorial spoils of war: the West
Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights. Golan’s “places to
build,” its “strategic plateau,” its “prize apples,” and its “vast playground”
spaces may be Israel’s until the end of mankind.
But if that end is a decade from now — or a day — will it really be worth it?
(Thanks to 'Dan sanchez' (urban Alabama) for Coopration of these all
information's about the Subject).