The Israelization of American Society
If there is more than mulish stupidity to Bush’s obsessive pursuit of an Iraq war, it has to do with his recognition of what a single-minded policy of military violence can do to a society — and for a politician.
In a year of bluster and blunders, the one great victory George W. Bush can legitimately lay claim to is the shattering of the liberal, pro-Democratic Jewish consensus on the rocks of the Palestinian problem, thanks to the extreme, unapologetic campaign of military suppression and reprisal conducted by Arial Sharon.
This annus horribilus has seen the total annihilation of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel has marched down the path of military suppression in the Palestinian territories, and Sharon is determined to pile up such a mountain of corpses, blasted buildings, anger, and hate behind it that there can be no turning back.
Bush is trying to take America down that same bloody road. If Bush is to be remembered as anything more than the eager stooge of the neo-imperialist war party, it will be for his amoral willingness to subject his own nation to the polarizing and demoralizing effects of a policy of incessant military violence.
George W. Bush’s America and Arial Sharon’s Israel display remarkable similarities. Both are the pre-eminent military powers in their spheres — the biggest bully on the block, if you will. Both are defiantly unilateralist, rejecting the U.N. as an instrument of forces hostile to their interests and ambitions. Both reject philosophical limits on the employment of force; both relish the freedom to strike pre-emptively. Both rely on their overwelming military strength and believe that escalation in violence plays into their hands and furthers their objectives.
Both place a high value on the culture of violence in polarizing their domestic societies, marginalizing dissent, and manipulating the media. Both are fundamentally anti-democratic and see delegitimizing democratic debate and opposition through invocation of war powers, misinformation, and disinformation as appropriate elements of their quasi-military function.
Of all the strongmen who played the terror card, no one did a better job than Arial Sharon. Apparently the brutal warrior found our AWOL-flyboy- president an eager and easily overawed student for his lessons in the pre-eminent efficacy of military violence. The result was grotesque synergies such as Sharon enthusiastically advising Congress that peace in the Middle East led through the smoking ruins of Baghdad; and America wandering away from the Middle East peace process as George W. Bush’s limited powers of commitment and concentration wilted beneath Sharon’s charisma.
Sharon got America’s ultimate endorsement — adoption of his bloody, confrontational policies towards dissent and armed resistance. Unfortunately for the Israelis, not to mention the Palestinians, this policy is now enshrined not only a national policy, but as an anti-terrorist orthodoxy of the world’s only superpower and Israel’s sole ally and protector.
And what did Bush, and America, get from this devil’s bargain? Bush got a vision, if you can call it that, in which perpetual military violence can be used to drive the domestic social and political agenda. A roadmap to a world of perpetual confrontation, crisis and bloodshed.
And despair. The same kind of despair Israelis feel when they see their country inheriting South Africa’s role as international pariahs, complete with death squads and Bantustans, and their options for peace and redemption foreclosed by a ever-escalating spiral of violence, anger, and fear. The same sort of despair that has caused moderate Israeli dissent to evaporate and allowed an energized far-right fringe to capture control of the national discourse.
But the blessing for the United States is that our situation is not irrevocable. We have the strength and security to renounce a policy of perpetual war. We still have a choice. All we lack is the leadership.
Copyright 2002 Peter Lee
