Hard Power

Peter Lee

February 15, 2005

Pre-emptive neo-con squeals of anti-Semitism and a general unwillingness to address the morally and politically messy question of Israel's role in our anti-terror and Middle East policy have created a void at the center of our national security debate. Even good guy Michael Moore dedicated Fahrenheit 9/11 to beating up on the Saudis instead of worrying our pretty heads about PNACers and Likudniks. But, as they say, fools rush in...The Israelization of America addressed George Bush's emulation of Ariel Sharon's hard power security strategy in 2002, and in 2003 I wrote Eyeless in Gaza...and Damascus to posit that Israel's Likudniks and America's neo-cons might engage in a back-and-forth tango of provocation and escalation in order to foreclose peace and stability and compel an aggressive U.S. military policy against our foes in the Middle East — even and especially when American public opinion might be weary and suspicious of renewed calls to war. Today Israel agitates openly for strikes against Syria and Iran. With Bush's accountability moment safely past,the success of the Iraq elections, and the looming prospect of lame duckery for Bush and continued meltdown in Iraq, maybe this is a unique window of opportunity for Sharon and the neo-cons to foment an incident and instigate a war against Syria. At the very least, the Hariri assassination is a blow to the European policy of engagement, accommodation, and peaceful incrementalism with Syria and Iran that is anathema to the Likudand the neo-cons. Another war (at a safe remove, of course) holds no terrors for George W. Bush. I have no doubt he would be easily seduced by neo-cons assurances that "we'll get it right this time" and a Syria campaign would fast forward beyond all the WMD/al Qaeda/welcomed as liberators/benevolent occupiers folderol straight to Fallujah-style occupation of a nation even smaller and weaker than Iraq. Then, when Iran and the world realizes that the Bush administration possesses the implacable intent — like the Japanese in 1930s Manchuria — to achieve its military objectives in the Middle East by any means, at any cost, and disdainful of any attempts to moderate its behavior, the Europeans will breathe a collective sigh of resignation and actively participate in the invasion of Iran so that some grown-ups will be around to clean up the mess after Bush retires to Crawford to ghostwrite his memoirs It's Not a Holocaust If It Happens to the Other Guy. PL Feb. 17, 2005

I don’t know who blew up Rafik Hariri in Beirut.

But the groups that could pull off such a spectacular, massive attack in the heart of Beirut would seem to be few.

The tin-foil hat is never far from my head nowadays, so I’ll say it seems just as likely that Israel was behind it as Syria.

Of course, U.S. confrontation with Syria is accelerating with suspicious alacrity. As this is written, on the heels of a confrontational Scott McClellan presser we’ve delivered a frosty note to Syria and recalled our ambassador.

Without taking the step of accusing Syria of killing Hariri, and thereby bereft of internal logic (let alone irony, given our own situation in Iraq), the State Department can still deliver deliver undisguised menace:

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, announcing the move, said it reflected the Bush administration's "profound outrage" over Hariri's assassination.

Boucher did not accuse Syria of being involved in the bombing Monday in Beirut. "I have been careful to say we do not know who committed the murder at this time," he said.

But he said the deadly attack illustrated that Syria's strong military and political presence in Lebanon was a problem and had not provided security in the neighboring country.

"It reminds us even more starkly that the Syrian presence in Lebanon is not good," Boucher said. "It has not brought anything to the Lebanese people."

Boucher refused to describe Syria's reaction to Scobey's diplomatic messages in Damascus.

That’s probably because Syria — which, I believe, even tortures suspects on our behalf in a futile attempt to ingratiate itself with the Bush regime — is making desperately sincere, peaceloving overtures that, for the sake of the blissful repose of the American people and the schemes of the Bush administration, cannot be heard.

The last thing Syria needed right now, of course, is to attract worldwide opprobrium to itself — or incense the Lebanese electorate against it just before the elections — by committing a spectacular political assassination. If they blew up Hariri, it was really, really stupid.

And they knew it.

Here’s a quote from Lebanon’s Daily Star February 14 edition (before Hariri was assassinated):

On Sunday London-based Al Hayat newspaper cited diplomatic sources in Paris saying the message carried by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen to Damascus last week contained a strong warning to Syrian president Bashar Assad not to interfere in Lebanon's upcoming elections.

The UN warned Assad that any attempts to harm opposition members, naming former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt, would lead to a "total, final and irrevocable divorce with the international community."

And you know what the title of the article was?

“Syria ready to begin troop withdrawal from Lebanon”

Well, that story sure got blown off the front page.

It looks like Syria won’t be getting any international credit for peacefully withdrawing its troops from Lebanon and decreasing regional tensions.

Israel and the U.S. can start pelting Syria with innuendo and — you guessed it — excoriate Syria for not withdrawing its troops from Lebanon.

We can whip up a full-blown regional security crisis against Syria — just about the only country weak and small enough for us to take on right now — and keep that Clean Break big mo going!

And the French diplomatic initiative that was gradually getting the Syrians out (and vindicating the European peaceful soft-power approach on the Middle East and for nasty old Iran) is kaput!

Thanks, Mr. Hariri!

Israel, of course, would love to move Syria to the front burner with a well-timed provocation.

And America — or at least its neocon contingent — would love to go along with Israel and drive the Middle East security agenda down the road of hard power and confrontation.

Syria, after all, is the low-hanging fruit that America and Israel are anxious to pluck, since Iran is, for the time being out of reach (I’m assuming Condi was unable to convince the Europeans to join in some grandiose Superfriends simultaneous invasion in which America, Germany, France, and England provide each other with the indispensable military and diplomatic cover needed to take out Iran’s widely dispersed, surrounded-by-gooey-civilians-nuclear facilities).

For Israel and the United States, the whole “they’re fucking with democracy” meme, coming on the heels of the Palestine and Iraq elections — i.e. the murder was an attempt to disrupt the Lebanese parliamentary elections that would point the purple finger at Syria and tell them to bug out of Lebanon — is a godsend.

With America’s credentials as world protector against WMDs, global scourge against terrorists, and triumphant liberator and benevolent occupier irrevocably tarnished, spinning a nice, messy regional crisis out of a murder in Beirut is perhaps the best way to obtain international acquiescence for a move against Syria.

Especially since, absent full-bore Axis of Evil behavior by Syria, an election that would peacefully call on a foreign occupier to depart would otherwise have uncomfortable parallels to America in Iraq.

The narrative that “Middle East democracy needs American protection” is a lot easier for Bush to work with than “democracy is a way for occupied Middle Eastern nations to recover their sovereignty and self-determination”.

Much better to pre-empt the Lebanese struggle for sovereignty with some of that good vs. evil, democracy vs. islamofascist bombs-away Yankee doodley die!

Certainly, for the United States, the best time to intervene for the sake of Lebanese democracy against Syria is while the sheen is still on democracy, Iraq-style across the border.

Is it a pre-existing plan, or just another quick Bush administration response to one of those fortuitous disasters that somehow occur whenever its political or foreign policy goals need an extra kick-start?

I suppose we on the outside will only be able to look at the rapid flowering of government pressers, op-eds, and well-organized and equipped demonstrations, and track the emergence of confrontation scenarios that escalate with head-snapping speed, and wonder.

Regardless of whodunit as far as Mr. Hariri is concerned, Syria is already in the crosshairs:

The United States will consult with other governments "about measures that can be taken to punish those responsible for this terrorist attack," and "to restore Lebanon's independence, sovereignty and democracy by freeing it from foreign occupation," the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said.

…

The bombing, McClellan said, appeared to have been "an attempt to stifle these efforts to build an independent, sovereign Lebanon free of foreign domination." Syria is the only foreign power with troops based in Lebanon.

…

McClellan's remarks during a White House briefing appeared to be a toughening of a stance taken hours earlier. Then, he said that it was unclear who had conducted the attack, but added, deliberately, that Lebanon must be able to build a future "free from Syrian occupation."… Hariri recently joined demands by Lebanese opposition politicians that Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon before general elections scheduled there for May.

…

Israel was less circumspect than McClellan was in suggesting a link between Syria and the attack.

An interesting backstory will be whether America uses the attack as an opportunity to shoulder aside France — for whom Lebanon has traditionally been the center of its interests in the Middle East — under the pretext that this is a regional crisis involving big, bad Syria that requires a global i.e. U.S. led response.

So the European soft-power regime-to-regime engagement policy typified by France and resoundingly discredited by a giant bomb days after France and the U.N. used diplomacy to protect Hariri) is superseded by U.S. hard-power saber rattling.

As a lagniappe, if our French friends want to stay involved in the future of Lebanon, they have to get sucked into whatever regional diplomatic or military fracas the U.S. seeks to foment against Syria.

And next year, all we need is a similar regional provocation — perhaps the assassination of some anti-Iran notable in Iraq — to get the ball rolling against Teheran and maybe get the French and Germans, as well as the Brits to participate in the latest installment of protecting Middle Eastern democracy by the force of American and European arms.

It looks to me as if the Bush administration may have finally cracked the code for how to promote and pursue its imperial adventures around the world.

Terrorist attacks against the homeland are too much of a double-edged sword to be used safely and repeatedly as justifications for overseas adventures.

True, when attacks occur, fearful Americans will go along with realiation against a plausible, demonized opponent. But attacks also are a conspicuous failure of the government’s security obligations, leading to embarrassing investigations that need squelching and spinning. And if attacks don’t occur, then the panic-stricken belief that small, robe-happy Middle Eastern countries are threatening our very existence become less pressing and plausible.

However, if we style ourselves the protectors of democracy, set up a shaky democracy in the Middle East, and pledge ourselves to protecting it at all costs — as we already do for Israel and we’re doing for Iraq — then we have a clear road to intervention simply by threatening the democracy’s neighbors, polarizing the political situation, blaming them when something bad happens, and destabilizing them through covert ops and military operations.

As we used to say of Taiwan vis a vis China, Iraq is our unsinkable aircraft carrier, our flashpoint for provocation, intimidation, instability, and intervention there.

And the reason this works is because the Right wing has cracked the democracy code.

The traditional equation was “rich mean bad guys < poor good guys = democracy works”.

Now it's “rich mean guys + money + media +confused, disillusioned people > confused, hopeful people = democracy for the rich”.

The Right can make democracy — a special kind of democracy — work for them now, domestically and internationally.

Give them credit. The Right has worked for decades turning democracy lemons into conservative Kool-Aid.

It started with money, ideology, and media.

Backed by popular bewilderment and hostility, the Right was able to hold the line against the expansion of rights, entitlements, and redistributive programs for various mass-based interest groups.

The left-wing, its political and ideological power effectively checked, was then discredited as a legitimate democratic force by demonizing it as a tool of special interests.

Government was reshaped — and diminished — as a nakedly partisan exercise that disillusioned those who came into contact with it.

The Democrats contributed by turning themselves into horse’s asses.

The Left, disorganized and conciliatory, was faced down by a united, hostile, and confrontational Right.

Now half the country sits out the elections while the other half, driven by fear and disgust, goes to the polls to try and keep the devil on the other side of the fence from gaining control of the government apparatus.

And political power falls into the hands of guys who created the new system, feed it with money and power, and benefit from it.

Reading Hariri’s obits, I was struck how similar his “good-guy plutocrat” resume resembled those of two other American good buddies: Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who seems to have lost his struggle to supplant Putin with a new political power based on Yukos oil, multi-nationals, and U.S. support.

They all courted and probably greased the media, which no doubt accounts for some of the fawning press coverage. They played the charity and public service card. They were allegedly corrupt. They did well in elections. And they are the kind of guys America likes to channel democracy through.

In fact, they look like offshore Republicans.

The kind of guy Ahmed Chalabi was supposed to be in Iraq.

The kind of guys we want running the Middle East.

Plugged into — and beholden to — the regional and global network of private wealth and hard power that has the U.S. elite at its center.

Hostile to the European network of public wealth and soft power that challenges us.

And ideally the countries they would lead would be divided, polarized, distrustful of mass political movements and the rhetoric of social justice, reliant upon big business and big money to set the social agenda, and vulnerable and ripe for intervention.

Countries that had suffered under American bombs and regarded democracy as a form of necessary and profitable appeasement.

That’s the kind of democracy we’re exporting to the world.

The weak and debased kind.

One that relies on America’s capacity for violence instead of our ideals for its potency.

An excuse for, and instrument of, hard power.

It would certainly be ironic if Rafik Hariri was not a martyr for, but an unknowing sacrifice to, Bush-style Middle East democracy.

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.

This is tiptoeing beyond Fair Use, but in case the Daily Star article becomes unavailable for whatever reason:

Monday, February 14, 2005
Syria ready to begin troop withdrawal from Lebanon

By Nada Raad and Khalil Fleihan
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Syria is ready to begin a large scale withdrawal of the 15,000 troops it has stationed in Lebanon before May's parliamentary elections.
Diplomatic sources in Paris said UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told French President Jacques Chirac that Syria is about to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and that a first withdrawal to Dahr al-Baidar, Mdayrej, and Ain-Dara (Lebanese border villages) will be completed before the elections.
But the source added that Syria's complete withdrawal from Lebanon, as called for
by Chirac following his meeting with Larsen at the weekend, will not occur unless "all
UN resolutions concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are implemented."
This flies in the face of both
French and UN insistence that Syria abide by 1559 without any linkage to other UN resolutions.
France, which sponsored 1559, will also observe Lebanon's parliamentary elections, scheduled for mid-April or early May.
On Sunday London-based Al Hayat newspaper cited diplomatic sources in Paris saying the message carried by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen to Damascus last week contained a strong warning to Syrian president Bashar Assad not to interfere in Lebanon's upcoming elections.
The UN warned Assad that any attempts to harm opposition members, naming former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt, would lead to a "total, final and irrevocable divorce with the international community."
Larsen, who was named to his post in January to report on the implementation of the UN resolution ahead of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's report, said that all parties concerned with 1559 need to express good will in implementing it.
Diplomatic sources said that Larsen asked Chirac to grant him additional time to implement the resolution because of the difficulty of disarming Hizbullah, which is supported by the Lebanese government.
The sources said that the disarmament of Hizbullah is likely to occur through negotiations with the concerned parties and not threats through issuing a second UN resolution and the use military force.
However, Lebanese observers said that any agreement of the international community on Larsen's suggestions is mainly linked to his meetings this week with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and European officials. Larsen will also meet with Palestinian officials to discuss the presence of weapons inside Palestinian camps here, and help Lebanon solve the issue.
Larsen will meet with Annan in New York on Monday to report to him on his tour of Lebanon and Syria.
Meanwhile, in a move to coordinate the two country's positions in the face of international pressure, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud and his Syrian counterpart Farouk Sharaa briefed each other on Larsen's visit.
Hammoud also called Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who is assigned by Damascus to handle the "Lebanese file" and informed him of the visit's details.
Commenting at the weekend on accusations by Lebanese President Emile Lahoud that the U.S. was using Lebanon to "stab Syria in the back" U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman said: "Our policy is not that of the United States but that of the international law."

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