Bushs Speech of Peace Means More War - US president demands

[Editor]

Bushs Speech of Peace Means More War
US president defends occupation of Palestine and demands Arafat's resignation

During an eagerly awaited speech on monday about the American peace plan for the middle east, US president George Bush was flanked by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and its Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose ideas for a longterm solution of the conflict differ strongly from the administration's. Bush's national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was also present. She had already indicated days ago that the president has no more use for the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat. As a condition of peace, president Bush called on Palestinians to elect new leaders "not compromised by terror" to attain a state alongside Israel. Bush urged the Palestinians to overhaul the Palestinian Authority, to rid it of corruption, create a legislature with real powers and establish an independent judiciary as part of a "working democracy." Only then would the United States be prepared to recognize a "provisional state" for the Palestinians.

With this position Bush follows the line supported by the right-wing of his party, including Vice President Cheney and the Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who completely support the brutal politics of occupation of Israeli president Sharon, accused of several war crimes. Without calling Yassir Arafat by name, Bush nevertheless made it very clear in his speech that he holds Arafat and the Palestinian Authority mainly responsible for the present violence and gave a green light to Sharon for the politics of occupation. This comes at a time in which the Israeli army is in a large new and deadly offensive in the occupied territories and puts at least 600,000 Palestinians caught in the middle virtually under house arrest.

President Bush mentioned terrorism nineteen times in his speech. On the other hand he spoke one time only in each case of the "occupied terretories", the Israeli settlements and the occupation. In a concession to Secretary Powell and the US-friendly governments in the Arab world, Bush said: " It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve. Israeli citizens will continue to be victimized by terrorists, and so Israel will continue to defend herself. In the situation the Palestinian people will grow more and more miserable.", In saying that, Bush, bordering on propaganda, skillfully switched cause and effect. In comparison to the US president, who is rigidly fixed on terrorism, even the Israeli Secretary of Defense Benjamin Elieser showed himself as as liberal, when last weekend he, with unexpected frankness, admitted that Israel's military operations became an "incubator of the (Palestinian) terror."

Secretary Powell's hopeful goal of a Palestinian state was only vaguely present in Bush's speech with promises for an interim solution, whereby "certain aspects of sovereignty " and future borders are solved much later only within a final agreement. Obviously this applies only if a new Palestinian leadership completely submits to the Israeli occupiers and breaks any resistance within its own population against the degradations inflicted by the occupying regime, against the arbitrariness of the settlers, and the unfairness of being treated as second class. The message of the American president Bush in his recent speech is loud and clear: Everyone who resists the Israeli occupiers is a terrorist, just like any nation which does not bow to the US led "new world order" is in danger of being classified as a rogue state and, in the context of the new Bush doctrine, being eliminated in a preventive strike. Considering the situation in the Middle East, Bush's unconditional support of Sharon will bring no peace, but only more war.


First published by German newspaper Junge Welt (http://www.jungewelt.de).
http://www.jungewelt.de/2002/06-26/001.php
Translated using Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com), revised, edited by vox.



(Edited by Editor at 11:13 pm on June 26, 2002)


(Edited by Editor at 11:39 pm on June 26, 2002)

[peaccenicked]

The nature of the beast.
(posted elswhere)
THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF WORLD DEVELOPMENT
A synopsis of Chapter 21.

Most world violence would disappear if the pressures to maintain a region as a supplier of basic commodities were replaced by a sincere philosophy, and sincere effort, to support sustainable development. Few governments would endure for long if they rejected an offer to industrialize just because the conditions required a democratic government that recognized its citizens' full rights. Leaders who are reluctant to surrender their dictatorial powers will, under these conditions, risk almost certain revolution. In any case, these dictators would have been overthrown long ago were they not being kept in power through the external support of imperial powers . Since the goal would be to win hearts and minds through democracy and development, continuing to support reactionary regimes would be self-defeating. Most insurrections are attempts to regain control of a people's own resources and destiny. In short, to gain economic freedom. If these desires for justice and rights were supported by the powerful, instead of denied, the world would quickly abandon war.

These insurrections could all be stopped dead in their tracks by honestly and effectively promoting democracy and capitalizing underdeveloped countries in trade for them giving up their weapons. This is what most are fighting for anyway. As production of armaments equaling several times the amount needed to produce industry for the world's impoverished would be eliminated, the cost would be nothing and there would be further substantial gains to the world in not having its social wealth destroyed by wars.

Currently, no matter how loud the praises of free trade, we know of no major imperial center of capital that is not extensively fudging on free trade rules. As these neo-mercantilist policies have been the cause of most wars, "spheres of influence," "power vacuums," "balances of power," "preponderance of power," "containment," and "realpolitiks," (all functioning under each imperial center of capital's "Grand Strategy" in the "Great Game" of who will control the world's wealth) must be substituted by a guarantee of each society's security. World trade should be structured to providing security through interdependence as opposed to the current insecurity through dependence. With all the world gaining rights and freedom, "spheres of influence" (which means little more than dominance over other societies) will disappear. Without dominant-and arbitrary-military power, there would then be no "power vacuums," "balance of power" or "containment" struggles. As opposed to the current guarantees of war and oppression, "realpolitiks," "realist" and "moralist" statecraft theory will mean peace, freedom, justice, and rights for all. "National security" would then be obtained through "world security." It would no longer be "international politics in the national interest but national politics in the international interest

In plain and unambiguous language, this should be the offer of the powerful industrialized nations to the world:

The cancellation of all unjust debts, the conversion of industrial capital once producing arms to production of industrial tools for the Third World, the United Nations to oversee the balanced and peaceful capitalization of the Third World; the borders of all countries to be guaranteed, the United Nations given the authority, soldiers, and the arms to back up that guarantee, and a worldwide embargo to automatically go into effect against any country that attacks or subverts another.
Once the external support of repressive regimes ceases, dictators will quickly fall. There will then be many countries that will qualify for industrialization and protection of their security. Any remaining governments that reject democracy would not stand for long when their citizens remain poor while their neighbors are becoming economically secure, especially if the world imposes sanctions; witness the political changes in relatively powerful South Africa with only a partial embargo. If the world's power brokers are sincere, their financial power can do enormous harm to any country that chooses to break those sanctions.

Once the rest of the world is disarmed, and all are therefore safe from attack, the weapons of mass destruction can be destroyed and adequate conventional weapons can be transferred to a world body to oversee peace. With destruction of the weapons of war and equal rights to capital, resources, and trade-as Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy envisioned-all societies could eventually produce for, and provide equal rights for, all their citizens.

People everywhere are basically good. If they are aware, the leaders will follow. After all, the citizens have the vote and no one could remain a leader if they opposed such an obviously peaceful and productive course. The purpose of the creation of enemies has been "strategies of tension" to prevent just such realizations by the common people. Thus the war-governments have been governments to protect the elite, not the people.