"U.S. placates Israel and opens New War Front while ignoring Palestinians" -- Rachelle Marshall
EXCERPT:Paying a High Price
The price America pays for its alliance with Israel became evident yet again when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian Muslim, tried to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit on Christmas Day. Washington officials and the media immediately engaged in handwringing over the failure of the elaborate U.S. intelligence network to stop Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane while armed with a bomb. Editorials and commentators discussed at length the usefulness of various screening devices. No one asked why young Muslims become angry enough to commit mass homicide. Or why the United States, but not Canada or Sweden, is a target of terrorism.
The answers have been evident ever since 9/11, when Middle East experts—not to mention Osama bin Laden—pointed to America’s past interventions in Iran and Lebanon, its backing of authoritarian regimes in oil-rich Arab states, and its support for Israel’s oppressive treatment of the Palestinians as the cause of widespread resentment throughout the Muslim world. They warned that reliance on military power would not end terrorism, but exacerbate existing grievances and serve to recruit more militants.
George W. Bush ignored that advice by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and as a result U.S. forces are now at war in two Muslim countries, and at least 5,000 young Americans have died in combat. Many of them have been killed by “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs), a highly effective weapon when used by an elusive enemy, and one that had not been thought of before 2003. Suicide bombings that were rare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan before the Iraq invasion are now almost daily occurrences in those countries.
Instead of eliminating terrorism, the U.S. response to 9/11 has led to the increase of militant extremists who are able to move from place to place, country to country. As a result, an offshoot of al-Qaeda has established bases in Yemen, where the shaky government is already fighting rebellious tribesmen. Al-Qaeda recently was joined by units of the Shebab, an Islamic resistance group in Somalia that gained strength after the U.S.-backed invasion by Ethiopia in 2006.
A cruise missile attack by the U.S. on Dec. 21 against ”suspected al-Qaeda sites” in Yemen killed 49 civilians, including children, but failed to kill the intended target. A few days later, The New York Times reported that American Special Operations forces and Green Berets, along with the CIA, have been carrying out covert paramilitary operations for some time in Yemen—operations that include what Gen. David Petraeus calls killing “bad guys that are not reconcilable.” The growing U.S. involvement has angered many Yemenis. ”There is no doubt that it has an effect on the common man,” a high-ranking Yemeni official said. “He sympathizes with al-Qaeda.” At least one large protest demonstration has already taken place.
The importance of Yemen to U.S. security agencies increased dramatically when it was revealed that Abdulmutallab was trained and equipped by al-Qaeda in Yemen. But there has been little if any discussion of the likely connection between the attempted bombing of an American plane and the desire to avenge the U.S. air strikes and assassinations that have taken place in Yemen, or the mistreatment of Yemenis imprisoned at Guantanamo. The deputy head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Said Ali Shihri, said the six years he spent at Guantanamo had strengthened his conviction.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban now control 160 of the country’s 364 districts and, according to Adm. Mike Mullin, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “The message to [Taliban recruits] keeps getting better and better, and more keep coming.” The message became better yet on Dec. 30, when Hamam Khalil Abu al-Balawi, a trusted informer for Jordanian intelligence and the CIA, entered a U.S. base in southeastern Afghanistan and blew up himself and his seven CIA and Jordanian handlers. Al-Balawi was a doctor who had been jailed in Jordan for volunteering to help wounded Palestinians in Gaza, and pressured by Jordanian intelligence into becoming a spy.
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan increased by more than 10 percent in 2009, and although at least half were caused by militants, the Afghans’ anger is directed against foreign forces and their own government, which they see as corrupt and incompetent. Parliament reflected their mistrust on Jan. 2 when it rejected 17 of President Hamid Karzai’s 24 Cabinet appointees, including several who had helped him win last August’s fraud-ridden election.
In Pakistan, more than 500 civilians were killed in suicide bombings during the last three months of 2009, and nearly 100 more died in a suicide bombing in South Waziristan on Jan. 1. Many Pakistanis blamed the Americans even for these deaths. “Everybody knows the presence of the American Army in this region is the root cause of the problems,” a local official told an interviewer with the newspaper Dawn. “People are dying in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in Iraq because of Obama’s policies.” Pakistanis also fear the U.S. Embassy, with more than 800 employees, is flooding the country with spies.
Another complicating factor Washington faces is that the Pakistanis consider India to be at least as great a threat to its security as the Taliban, because of its iron grip on Kashmir and perceived support for secessionist forces in Baluchistan. The Pakistanis are especially worried by India’s growing presence in Afghanistan and the U.S. buildup of India as a strategic ally.
Such complexities point to the difficulty of fighting wars in countries with strategic interests that differ from America’s. When Obama announced he was sending 30,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan he said he had “no interest in an endless war.” If so, there will sooner or later have to be a political solution that involves the participation of all major Afghan groups, including the Taliban and other Islamists, as well as India and Iran. Escalating the fighting will only postpone the day when those negotiations can begin.
It seems certain that neither far-flung wars nor improved body searches will keep Americans safe as long as the U.S. policies in the Middle East continue to arouse popular outrage. The time bomb Americans have to fear most are the pictures of grieving families and bomb-shattered buildings caused by U.S. firepower—scenes that evoke the same horror whether they take place in Kunar province or in Gaza.
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