George W. Bush wants to put the noose around Saddam Hussein. Ariel Sharon would like to do the honors for Yasser Arafat. Most other leaders in the Middle East would like to kick the chair out from under Bush and Sharon. A man recently told me, "Let 'em all dangle!"
Bush must build Arab support if he is to fulfill his dream of squashing Iraq. But this support hardly exists, and as the Israeli Defense Force fires more American-made rockets into Palestinian refugee camps, it is completely disappearing.
Trying to salvage the master plan, Bush recently said "no" to Sharon, demanding a pullout. So Sharon pulled out of two West Bank towns, and escalated attacks on others. Cameras watch as Merkava tanks roll over houses and Apache helicopters spray bullets into heavily populated neighborhoods.
"No" is not working so well. Perhaps Sharon is sick of compromising his bellicose nature to Bush's broader plan of regional hegemony. Perhaps he is ready to implement his "1982 Lebanon Solution" in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, George W. is playing politics. The war on terror is merely politics; that is, designed to achieve political goals with little or no intention of solving the addressed problem.
And these things sometimes get out of control. Now Sharon has taken the reigns of the war on terror, escalating it to an existential battle between good and evil, and reiterating what Bush said post-Sept. 11 to justify his current operations against the Palestinians. Bush might not really care about the Palestinians, except that they happen to be the pivotal point around which Arab support oscillates.
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So to save face, Bush says "no." But if he really meant it - whether it was for having a heart or simply for the chance to bomb Iraq - he could have a profound effect on Israeli aggression. How? Hmmm .
Israel happens to be by far the fattest recipient of military aid from the United States. The figures are averaged at $3 billion a year, but exact numbers are hard to come by due to the numerous government accounts through which the money morphs into weapons.
At any rate, aid to Israel makes up one-sixth of total U.S. foreign aid, and most of this goes to the purchase of American-made weaponry currently being used on the Palestinians.
Many Israeli officials have shown anger towards George W. for trying to impede Sharon's efforts to crush the "infrastructure" of terror in Palestine. On one hand, I agree with them. If the United States is going to provide them with a plethora of weapons, it should be understood that they may be used.
The Israeli Defense Force also enjoys some autonomy from empty Bush demands, because by this point the weapons depots are overflowing. The force could survive a temporary cut in loan guarantees and military aid. Indeed, Bush might do this - like his father did 11 years ago - to earn Arab support for an attack on Iraq.
But peace will not come out of these shallow political strategies. The distribution of aid will have to be fundamentally altered and institutionalized so that money will be used to build both economies and civil societies, not militaries. The tradition of giving $3 billion a year to the offensive Israeli Defense Force must be ended. Furthermore, it must be done for the sake of peace, and not to indirectly achieve nefarious political goals.
Ultimately, however, the conflict at large is more about oil than anything else. The avarice for this product has magnified class, ethnic, religious and political conflict all over the Middle East and the world. And although it is impossible to blame any one man, company, country or god for today's political mayhem - and it is even less likely that a solution is as simple as the original problem - we can still change things by changing the way we look at oil.
I thereby applaud any and all who will chain themselves to gas pumps in order to remind us that our beautiful gas-guzzling SUVs are not blood free.
by Mike Wolff
Daily Lobo Columnist
Questions or comments can be sent to Mike Wolff at mudrat@unm.edu.
