SPEAKING
FREELY Creating a 'secure
Israel' By Erik Zielinski
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
A number
of articles have recently appeared in various venues,
including Asia Times Online, that trace the reasons for
the Iraq invasion by the US-led coalition to the desire
on the part of the strong American-Jewish lobby to
"secure Israel" and on the part of President George W
Bush to please the Jewish constituency.
Retiring
South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings publicly expressed
this opinion in a column published in several newspapers
in his home state last month. The senator reflected,
presumably, an opinion of a substantial silent portion
of politicians on Capitol Hill. Assuming that the Iraq
invasion was motivated by the need to ensure the
security of Israel, a question immediately arises: How
does invading Iraq further Israeli interests?
Several mechanisms have been advanced to link
Israeli security and the invasion of Iraq. Some say that
neo-conservatives do indeed want to "install" democracy
in Iraq. Democracy is then viewed as either a "real"
thing or a rhetorical tool used by the elites to control
the masses. In the former case, the argument is made
that democratic countries abstain from warfare with
other democracies.
Leo Strauss, the father of US
neo-conservatism, tells us, however, that democratic
masses are susceptible to political charlatans and
innately anti-Semitic: just look at what happened to the
Weimar Republic in Germany in the lead-up to World War
II. Thus democracy can't be a real thing. In the latter
case, does it really matter whether the elite rules by
democracy or by tyranny, as long as this elite
recognizes a master in the United States? This brings us
to the second mechanism for ensuring Israeli interests.
But before proceeding further, let us take a diversion
to see what neo-conservatives may mean when they talk
about "democratizing" the Middle East.
Bringing
democracy to the Middle East intuitively implies making
"them" in our image. But what is the difference between
"us" and "them"? There is no better authority on this
subject than Strauss, once again. Here is what the old
master sees as the essential difference between
Christianity and Islam:
"Revelation as
understood by Jews and Muslims has the character of law
(Tora, Sharia) rather than of faith. Accordingly, what
first came to the sight of the Islamic and Jewish
philosophers in their reflections on revelation was not
a creed or a set of dogmas, but a social order, if an
all-comprehensive order, which regulates not merely
actions but thoughts or opinions as well."
(Persecution and the Art of Writing,
Introduction, page 9)
Furthermore: "For the
Christian, the sacred doctrine is revealed theology; for
the Jew and the Muslim, the sacred doctrine is, at least
primarily, the legal interpretation of the divine law
(talmud or fiqh). The sacred doctrine in
the latter sense has, to say the least, much less in
common with philosophy than the sacred doctrine in the
former sense. It is ultimately for this reason that the
status of philosophy was, as a matter of principle, much
more precarious in Judaism and in Islam than in
Christianity: in Christianity philosophy became an
integral part and even required training of the student
of the sacred doctrine. The difference explains partly
the eventual collapse of philosophic inquiry in the
Islamic and in the Jewish world, a collapse which has no
parallel in the Western Christian world."
(Persecution and the Art of Writing,
Introduction, page 18)
Finally: "Classical Greek
philosophy permitted, nay, demanded an exoteric teaching
(as a supplement to its esoteric teaching) which, while
not claiming to be strictly speaking true, was
considered indispensable for the right ordering of human
society." (Plan of a book tentatively titled
Philosophy and the Law: Historical Essays in Jewish
Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, Appendix1)
By esoteric teaching, Strauss means Greek
natural philosophy, and by exoteric teaching he means
Christianity. Indeed, many Greek thinkers were notorious
doubters frequently accused of disbelief in gods. Thus
the Western Christian world carried in itself Greek
values "of the full dedication of the individual to the
contest for excellence, distinction, supremacy"
(Jerusalem and Athens, page 4) and in secret,
preoccupation with natural philosophy, while the Muslim
world developed cohesive societies a la Plato's
Republic. And here we are now, with Western
countries preoccupied with individual rights and
technical advances and Middle Eastern societies deeply
in poverty and dominated by totalitarian regimes.
Can Islam be reformed to promote individual
excellence and technological development? Vladimir Lenin
abolished private property and religion in Russia
through ruthless extermination of whole classes of
people. Perhaps a similar feast could be accomplished in
the Middle East. Lenin, however, was a Russian and had a
base of followers in the country. An occupying force is
clearly poorly positioned and equipped to ban and much
less to reform an alien religion. Is Ahmad Chalabi, the
head of the Iraqi National Congress, an Iraqi Lenin?
Returning to our subject at hand, another
mechanism to ensure Israeli interests is to replace
regimes hostile to Israel, such as Syria and Iran, with
friendly ones. Note that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was
in the category of "friendly" regimes: there is no
evidence that it planned to interfere with US interests.
Perhaps to get to Syria and Iran, Iraq had to fall. This
approach has several drawbacks. For one, there is no
certainty that regimes that emerge will be friendly to
the United States. It seems that an alternative of
keeping the current regimes weakened through sanctions
was and is more feasible. Second, an immediate external
threat will and does surely promote cohesion in the
Middle Eastern ethnocentric Muslim societies and lead to
destabilization of currently friendly regimes. Finally,
"friendly" regimes require continuous maintenance. At
some point, US dedication to these regimes, as well as
to Israel, might wane. The US is a democracy susceptible
to quickly changing political winds and political
charlatans. Thus a better, more permanent mechanism is
badly needed.
Such a mechanism is a war of
"civilizations": in a conflict between the Western
Christian world and Middle Eastern Muslim societies, the
awesome might of the West comes down on the side of
Israel against its enemies for generations to come,
regardless of the administration in the White House,
until one warring party accepts defeat. To be successful
in a continuous conflict of such a magnitude, the West
must become more like the East. Individuals must
surrender their personal freedoms for security; religion
in a religious war must dramatically ascend in
importance; Western societies must become cohesive and
mobilized for the military efforts.
The idea of
conflict of civilizations received some attention with
the publication of a book by Samuel Huntington called
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the
World Order. The rulers in the United States chose
to package the Iraq invasion as a "war on terror" and a
messianic mission to bring "democracy" to the oppressed.
The goal, however, was and remains to launch the logic
of revenge and retaliation that would surely escalate
into an all-out civilizational struggle for survival.
The Iraq invasion was a revenge for September 11, 2001,
exerted on the whole of the Islamic world and a
preemptive insult. Pictures of Iraqi detainees being
tortured by US soldiers in a Baghdad prison dispelled
any remaining aura of honor associated with the Iraqi
mission. These same images forced the American populace
to realize that the US really did do harm to Iraqis and
that Iraqis are now entitled to retaliation. This brings
about a sober justification for the war: we harmed them,
they want revenge, we must fight to defend ourselves.
Notably, the Pentagon neither tried to remedy the
situation in the prisons nor to cover it up. The logic
of mutual hatred may have already passed the point of no
return.
Commenting on the conversation between
Thrasymachus and Socrates on the nature of justice in
Plato's Republic, Strauss wonders: "No
association can last if its members do not practice
justice among themselves. This, however, amounts to an
admission that justice may be a mere means, if an
indispensable means, for injustice, for exploitation of
outsiders. Above all, it does not dispose of the
possibility that the city is a community held together
by collective selfishness and nothing else, or that
there is no fundamental difference between the city and
a gang of robbers." (An Introduction to Political
Philosophy, page 177)
The West must never
forget that it is not a gang of robbers and that its
roots go deeply into Greek tradition. The condition in
which we come out of this "conflict of civilizations"
depends on whether we always remember who we are and
where we are coming from.
(Copyright 2004 Erik
Zielinski.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
