Hibakusha
(Hibakusha is the term widely used in Japan referring to victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
Sunday, August the 6th was the 61st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
Once more the thought of what that day brought upon not just Japan, but the rest of history is a sharp thorn that continues to draw blood from our collective vein.
Yet right now in the Middle East we're witnessing a situation being pushed towards the inevitable. That Lebanon is being laid waste is in and of itself tragic and lunatic enough, but that that apparently local dispute can lead to new Hiroshimas of far greater scale and destruction is immeasurably more chilling. While any criticism of Israeli action is being shouted down as yet another expression of the rest of the world's anti-Semitism, Western governments are sitting on their hands and trying hard to ignore the ramifications of an expanding Middle Eastern war. Escalating an explosive situation such as we know exists in the Middle East is short sighted to say the least.
The foolishness of the Arab world in still clinging to the idea that Israel can, or indeed should be removed, and Israeli bullishness in defence of its perceived territory, coupled with Western insistence on not understanding that freedom means different things to different cultures, and that the exercise of Democracy is not necessarily the only route to creating a free nation, at least not the American brand of that philosophy, has put us on a path whose only destination can be disaster and annihilation. The evangelism of the US leadership, the wrong-headedness of the notion that there is only one model for freedom, and the hypocritical example being set daily that tells us that if we do not agree with American policy then we shall have it bombed into us, and the implied license that this mode of operation grants to all nations is a heady mix on its own. Add to that the growing belligerence of Islamic doctrine, the deliberate misrepresentation of Islamic belief and its coercion into a narrow tool for the furtherance of political ambitions in the Middle East, the continual misguiding of the Muslim populace into more and more extreme modes of so called Fundamental Islamism, and you have perhaps one of the most potent explosive mixtures we have seen since the Cold War supposedly ended.
Garrulous and rampant US and British Hawkishness is supplying an effective fast-burning fuse to blow this mix sky high.
There is a purported gathering of opposition in the ranks of the Western nations against the various policies and actions that are taking shape in Middle East. The symptoms of this present disaster were already fully detectable from the moment those two aircraft shattered the twin towers. The West chose a gloves-off policy and propaganda that could only lead us to a scenario closely resembling the action we see unfolding today. The tacit licensing of Israeli over-reaction, the correct degree of pressure to push an already ailing and alienated Muslim World into a vortex of paranoia and enmity, the encouragement of Iran towards more and more extreme forms of government, the barely unspoken go-ahead to Pakistan to see hope in its territorial ambitions towards India, and the uncountable other minor and major resurrections of territorial disputes and secessionist ideologies being reborn across the globe, are all disasters that could have been avoided, if the correct form of diplomacy had been applied to the handling of these sensitive and highly predictable situations. Yet the US still insists on crippling any attempt towards calming the situation down, by simply obfuscating the issues, and refusing to take a decisive hand in correcting its own mistakes and mishandling of the events now taking place. The UN, once a great and hopeful potential force for the rule of reason in world politics, has been limping badly for years and is now fully hobbled by the insertion of a US ambassador transparently hostile to the entire institution, whose sole aim seems to be using the already fabulously over-used US power of veto, with the result of making that flawed organisation appear even more superfluous than ever.
What of the much vaunted axis forming between Iran, Syria and Hizbollah? Is there any truth in the awesome capacities of this alliance? I honestly doubt that in the event of an attack by Israel on Syria, Iran will be able to send any significant military help or indeed any help at all, except perhaps its good will, to help Syria. Consider the geography. There is a huge, US controlled land and air space separating the two main arms of this axis. For Iran to significantly send support to Syria, she has first to fight her way through Iraq, thereby engaging itself in full combat with the US, on land and in the air. Meanwhile Syria, deeply accessible to Israel will find itself effectively crippled in a short space of time, if the example of the Six Day War is anything to go by. I have heard that one route of access for Iran is through Turkey. But the Turkish-Iranian border is well protected by US troop reserves stationed there, from what I understand. At any rate at this time Turkey is trying to join the European Union and would certainly think hard and deep about alienating its prospective allies by helping Iran. Given all that, and even believing the alliance between Iran and Syria not to be at best bravado and at worst a sham, I personally can see no effective way for Iran being a contender against Israel except in empty threats and theatrical chest thumping.
Israel on the other hand has made its intentions perfectly clear, its desire to create a wide no-man's land, a de-militarised buffer zone about its perimeter, by simply laying waste to its neighbouring countries, is a classically simple and effective form of preventative defence strategy. With all of Iran and Syria's bluster, if Israel decides to carry its present action to its logical conclusion it can not fail to succeed in removing all effective opposition from about its national boundaries. With the US keeping its back safe, Israel can in a matter of months, establish a massive safe zone around itself, thereby creating a core of safety inside its present borders, that would ultimately be an impenetrable fortress against all comers. And short of serious and massive long-range capability on the part of its enemies, it would fully control the entire region as the sole military might, capable of setting all the rules in the Middle East. In case it has missed anyone's notice, Israel at present is the only nation in the region capable of reducing even far away Iran to rubble, with the massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction supplied to it by the US and her Allies, not to mention its own formidable capacity in weapons manufacture.
Thus neutralised the Arab alliances will not do very much but crumble in the face insurmountable odds. Arab alliances have historically been shaky at the best of times, and a factor that habitually gets overlooked in Western propaganda is that the Arabs have been no better at keeping a united front amongst themselves than the rest of the world has. At the slightest sign of trouble they are likely to quietly back out of any vows of union they have apparently made between themselves. The Arab world is far more tribal in structure still than the West likes to give them credit for. It serves Western propaganda well to present the Muslim world as a monolithic union of fanatical adherence, but this is at best a misunderstanding of the dynamics extant in that world, and at worst the meanest of scare tactics employed to de-humanise the entire Arab world, in order to gain popular support for holding them to ransom by an increasingly resource hungry West.
Looking back on what I've written above something struck me. It reads like the description of events from an older epoch, a positively Medieval flavour. Speaking in 2006 of conquest and intrigue, I feel a definite thrum of familiarity run through me, like reading back an essay on the history of a lost period, when knights battled over control of European feudal lands, of political marriages, of false treaties and deals struck in a bid for gaining the upper hand. Somehow it seemed that the Second World War had put an end to all that. But if there is a shred of truth in my analysis above then we have certainly not changed in the least, except perhaps in the scope of our ambitions, and in the power of our destruction.
I am sure I will get comments asking me to propose a solution to the problems I've outlined here. Very well I can only express the most obvious solution, since it is shiningly clear what the solution is, and has always been. Truth, telling it like it is, disseminating the actual facts of the situation and letting Justice take its course is the only true solution. That Israel must exist, but an Israel that does not abuse its power, an Israel that will be a just friend to the people it has displaced and finally allow them the full rights of citizenship and equality it has so long denied them. A Palestine that is willing to lay down arms and forget the injustices of the past and allow a cleansing of the bad blood that has been generated since their lands were given over to the nascent state of Israel. A Muslim world, that is allowed to shed its fanatic element and to be given the chance to rediscover the more positive and peaceful aspects of its common religion. A Muslim world that finally understands what its warlike ancestors understood better by far. That there is a time for aggression and there a time for pause and for thought. That there will be no flowering of knowledge and science and progress if it insists on regarding the world from the ever narrowing Judas window of fundamentalism. It requires a US leadership that is mature and responsible and at least partly able to take on the role it has sought since WWII, that of World leadership and the Policeman of the World. A US that has learned the art of international diplomacy. It requires a Europe no longer held in thrall of American power and supremacy, and can act once more as a confident world leader. An England that is lead by those who are able to see that the long term interest of the UK is not to disappear ever further into the pocket of a bullying US administration. It takes the loud and clear voices of Muslims, Jews and Christians, demanding equilibrium and peace, demanding unwaveringly that we be told the truth, in order to find a way to live together in equality, balance, peace and mutual respect. It takes careful and exacting examination of our potential leaders, and voting for those who will rule with at least a good percentage of our interests and well-being in mind. A leadership that understands the fragility of our planet and the staggeringly dangerous stage it has reached. We need a real operable plan for how the world will be, not just tomorrow, but once our precious resources are finally exhausted. A leadership that finally behaves as if they have really understood what it means for there not to be any more reserves of oil and coal and fossil fuels. A world that is, albeit belatedly preparing, post haste for the time of fundamental and root change that is so close at hand. We are a single generation away from having none of the resources we have based our modern world on left to draw from. Yet our leaders are still fighting wars of conquest as if by taking control of the sources of these resources they would delay their ending, as if ownership of these would prolong their availability. Incredible that seemingly the entire world is suffering from a clinical case of denial.
Are my proposed solutions the impossible pipe dreams of an idealist? Is what I propose impracticable? Impossible? Then I can only respond in one way. My belief is firmly that we have reached a pivotal point in our history where the only possible solutions are sweepingly dramatic and wide-ranging ones requiring every ounce of our imagination and intellectual capacity. No other solutions are feasible, none other, drastic enough to be of any use. It is my belief that today we stand at a point of history where all other doors have closed and the only way forward is immediate and lasting peace, and a totally united effort in finding exact and workable solutions to the root problems that have pushed us to the very edge of euthanasia. Perhaps the end of our species is inevitable, perhaps we have been moving ever faster towards our logical biological end-cycle, but in our position at the top of the food chain coupled with our immense capacity for problem solving surely we must be able to prolong our survival somehow, surely our innovation can come to our rescue now when we need it more than ever in our two million plus years of evolution. If not then let's gracefully bend over and kiss our collective arses goodbye.
Sunday, August the 6th was the 61st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
Once more the thought of what that day brought upon not just Japan, but the rest of history is a sharp thorn that continues to draw blood from our collective vein.
Yet right now in the Middle East we're witnessing a situation being pushed towards the inevitable. That Lebanon is being laid waste is in and of itself tragic and lunatic enough, but that that apparently local dispute can lead to new Hiroshimas of far greater scale and destruction is immeasurably more chilling. While any criticism of Israeli action is being shouted down as yet another expression of the rest of the world's anti-Semitism, Western governments are sitting on their hands and trying hard to ignore the ramifications of an expanding Middle Eastern war. Escalating an explosive situation such as we know exists in the Middle East is short sighted to say the least.
The foolishness of the Arab world in still clinging to the idea that Israel can, or indeed should be removed, and Israeli bullishness in defence of its perceived territory, coupled with Western insistence on not understanding that freedom means different things to different cultures, and that the exercise of Democracy is not necessarily the only route to creating a free nation, at least not the American brand of that philosophy, has put us on a path whose only destination can be disaster and annihilation. The evangelism of the US leadership, the wrong-headedness of the notion that there is only one model for freedom, and the hypocritical example being set daily that tells us that if we do not agree with American policy then we shall have it bombed into us, and the implied license that this mode of operation grants to all nations is a heady mix on its own. Add to that the growing belligerence of Islamic doctrine, the deliberate misrepresentation of Islamic belief and its coercion into a narrow tool for the furtherance of political ambitions in the Middle East, the continual misguiding of the Muslim populace into more and more extreme modes of so called Fundamental Islamism, and you have perhaps one of the most potent explosive mixtures we have seen since the Cold War supposedly ended.
Garrulous and rampant US and British Hawkishness is supplying an effective fast-burning fuse to blow this mix sky high.
There is a purported gathering of opposition in the ranks of the Western nations against the various policies and actions that are taking shape in Middle East. The symptoms of this present disaster were already fully detectable from the moment those two aircraft shattered the twin towers. The West chose a gloves-off policy and propaganda that could only lead us to a scenario closely resembling the action we see unfolding today. The tacit licensing of Israeli over-reaction, the correct degree of pressure to push an already ailing and alienated Muslim World into a vortex of paranoia and enmity, the encouragement of Iran towards more and more extreme forms of government, the barely unspoken go-ahead to Pakistan to see hope in its territorial ambitions towards India, and the uncountable other minor and major resurrections of territorial disputes and secessionist ideologies being reborn across the globe, are all disasters that could have been avoided, if the correct form of diplomacy had been applied to the handling of these sensitive and highly predictable situations. Yet the US still insists on crippling any attempt towards calming the situation down, by simply obfuscating the issues, and refusing to take a decisive hand in correcting its own mistakes and mishandling of the events now taking place. The UN, once a great and hopeful potential force for the rule of reason in world politics, has been limping badly for years and is now fully hobbled by the insertion of a US ambassador transparently hostile to the entire institution, whose sole aim seems to be using the already fabulously over-used US power of veto, with the result of making that flawed organisation appear even more superfluous than ever.
What of the much vaunted axis forming between Iran, Syria and Hizbollah? Is there any truth in the awesome capacities of this alliance? I honestly doubt that in the event of an attack by Israel on Syria, Iran will be able to send any significant military help or indeed any help at all, except perhaps its good will, to help Syria. Consider the geography. There is a huge, US controlled land and air space separating the two main arms of this axis. For Iran to significantly send support to Syria, she has first to fight her way through Iraq, thereby engaging itself in full combat with the US, on land and in the air. Meanwhile Syria, deeply accessible to Israel will find itself effectively crippled in a short space of time, if the example of the Six Day War is anything to go by. I have heard that one route of access for Iran is through Turkey. But the Turkish-Iranian border is well protected by US troop reserves stationed there, from what I understand. At any rate at this time Turkey is trying to join the European Union and would certainly think hard and deep about alienating its prospective allies by helping Iran. Given all that, and even believing the alliance between Iran and Syria not to be at best bravado and at worst a sham, I personally can see no effective way for Iran being a contender against Israel except in empty threats and theatrical chest thumping.
Israel on the other hand has made its intentions perfectly clear, its desire to create a wide no-man's land, a de-militarised buffer zone about its perimeter, by simply laying waste to its neighbouring countries, is a classically simple and effective form of preventative defence strategy. With all of Iran and Syria's bluster, if Israel decides to carry its present action to its logical conclusion it can not fail to succeed in removing all effective opposition from about its national boundaries. With the US keeping its back safe, Israel can in a matter of months, establish a massive safe zone around itself, thereby creating a core of safety inside its present borders, that would ultimately be an impenetrable fortress against all comers. And short of serious and massive long-range capability on the part of its enemies, it would fully control the entire region as the sole military might, capable of setting all the rules in the Middle East. In case it has missed anyone's notice, Israel at present is the only nation in the region capable of reducing even far away Iran to rubble, with the massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction supplied to it by the US and her Allies, not to mention its own formidable capacity in weapons manufacture.
Thus neutralised the Arab alliances will not do very much but crumble in the face insurmountable odds. Arab alliances have historically been shaky at the best of times, and a factor that habitually gets overlooked in Western propaganda is that the Arabs have been no better at keeping a united front amongst themselves than the rest of the world has. At the slightest sign of trouble they are likely to quietly back out of any vows of union they have apparently made between themselves. The Arab world is far more tribal in structure still than the West likes to give them credit for. It serves Western propaganda well to present the Muslim world as a monolithic union of fanatical adherence, but this is at best a misunderstanding of the dynamics extant in that world, and at worst the meanest of scare tactics employed to de-humanise the entire Arab world, in order to gain popular support for holding them to ransom by an increasingly resource hungry West.
Looking back on what I've written above something struck me. It reads like the description of events from an older epoch, a positively Medieval flavour. Speaking in 2006 of conquest and intrigue, I feel a definite thrum of familiarity run through me, like reading back an essay on the history of a lost period, when knights battled over control of European feudal lands, of political marriages, of false treaties and deals struck in a bid for gaining the upper hand. Somehow it seemed that the Second World War had put an end to all that. But if there is a shred of truth in my analysis above then we have certainly not changed in the least, except perhaps in the scope of our ambitions, and in the power of our destruction.
I am sure I will get comments asking me to propose a solution to the problems I've outlined here. Very well I can only express the most obvious solution, since it is shiningly clear what the solution is, and has always been. Truth, telling it like it is, disseminating the actual facts of the situation and letting Justice take its course is the only true solution. That Israel must exist, but an Israel that does not abuse its power, an Israel that will be a just friend to the people it has displaced and finally allow them the full rights of citizenship and equality it has so long denied them. A Palestine that is willing to lay down arms and forget the injustices of the past and allow a cleansing of the bad blood that has been generated since their lands were given over to the nascent state of Israel. A Muslim world, that is allowed to shed its fanatic element and to be given the chance to rediscover the more positive and peaceful aspects of its common religion. A Muslim world that finally understands what its warlike ancestors understood better by far. That there is a time for aggression and there a time for pause and for thought. That there will be no flowering of knowledge and science and progress if it insists on regarding the world from the ever narrowing Judas window of fundamentalism. It requires a US leadership that is mature and responsible and at least partly able to take on the role it has sought since WWII, that of World leadership and the Policeman of the World. A US that has learned the art of international diplomacy. It requires a Europe no longer held in thrall of American power and supremacy, and can act once more as a confident world leader. An England that is lead by those who are able to see that the long term interest of the UK is not to disappear ever further into the pocket of a bullying US administration. It takes the loud and clear voices of Muslims, Jews and Christians, demanding equilibrium and peace, demanding unwaveringly that we be told the truth, in order to find a way to live together in equality, balance, peace and mutual respect. It takes careful and exacting examination of our potential leaders, and voting for those who will rule with at least a good percentage of our interests and well-being in mind. A leadership that understands the fragility of our planet and the staggeringly dangerous stage it has reached. We need a real operable plan for how the world will be, not just tomorrow, but once our precious resources are finally exhausted. A leadership that finally behaves as if they have really understood what it means for there not to be any more reserves of oil and coal and fossil fuels. A world that is, albeit belatedly preparing, post haste for the time of fundamental and root change that is so close at hand. We are a single generation away from having none of the resources we have based our modern world on left to draw from. Yet our leaders are still fighting wars of conquest as if by taking control of the sources of these resources they would delay their ending, as if ownership of these would prolong their availability. Incredible that seemingly the entire world is suffering from a clinical case of denial.
Are my proposed solutions the impossible pipe dreams of an idealist? Is what I propose impracticable? Impossible? Then I can only respond in one way. My belief is firmly that we have reached a pivotal point in our history where the only possible solutions are sweepingly dramatic and wide-ranging ones requiring every ounce of our imagination and intellectual capacity. No other solutions are feasible, none other, drastic enough to be of any use. It is my belief that today we stand at a point of history where all other doors have closed and the only way forward is immediate and lasting peace, and a totally united effort in finding exact and workable solutions to the root problems that have pushed us to the very edge of euthanasia. Perhaps the end of our species is inevitable, perhaps we have been moving ever faster towards our logical biological end-cycle, but in our position at the top of the food chain coupled with our immense capacity for problem solving surely we must be able to prolong our survival somehow, surely our innovation can come to our rescue now when we need it more than ever in our two million plus years of evolution. If not then let's gracefully bend over and kiss our collective arses goodbye.
posted by FLUX at 6:00 PM
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