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Too late for all those regretsSubmitted by Prometheus 6 on March 22, 2006 - 8:47pm.
on War According to OpinionJournal, we've already lost the Iraq war. The signs of defeat:
We've lost credibility already because of our dealings with North Korea. But here, the key is "coercive diplomacy will have no credibility," and that happens because we don't have enough force to play a decisive hand anymore. The USofA ignored the simple maxim that the way to win a battle after a full-day march is to make your enemy do the marching. You simply cannot win a war of attrition when you have to project your force literally half way around the world. Broader Mideast instability. No one should underestimate America's deterrent effect in that unstable region, a benefit that would vanish if we left Iraq precipitously. Iran would feel free to begin unfettered meddling in southern Iraq with the aim of helping young radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr overwhelm moderate clerics like the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.Iran's sudden prominence is a direct result of U.S. actions in the region. And let me tell you the real threat in the Middle East. If any Arab country in the Middle East gets a single nuclear weapon, Israel's military dominance is gone. Poof. Suddenly those UN resolutions Israel has been ignoring all these years will look a lot more reasonable in some circles... And a lot less in others. Fear is Israel's social glue. The fear Americans have that the terrorists will come and nuke our cows pales before the national terror that will sweep Israel on confirmation that an Arab country has The Bomb. They will drop a security regime in place that will be positively...Hessian in nature. And it's inevitable. The US will inevitably leave. Some Arab nation, likely Iran, will inevitably get a nuclear weapon. We would lose all credibility with Muslim reformers.Oh, spare me. We would invite more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden said many times that he saw the weak U.S. response to Somalia and the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings as evidence that we lacked the will for a long fight. The forceful response after 9/11 taught al Qaeda otherwise, but a retreat in Iraq would revive that reputation for American weakness. While Western liberals may deny any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, bin Laden and the rest of the Arab world see it clearly and would advertise a U.S. withdrawal as his victory. [P6: emphasis added] Far from leaving us alone, bin Laden would be more emboldened to strike the U.S. homeland with a goal of driving the U.S. entirely out of the Mideast.Wild. As of this writing, George W. Bush denies a connection between Iraq and the attack on 9/11. And as of this writing, any reputation for weakness the USofA has comes from running out of equipment and obvious ineptitude of planning and execution. I have a weird, freakish view of this matter that I have never seen expressed elsewhere.So, James, how long have you been Black?  Seriously, you'd hear similar comments in the barber shop. I am, in fact, offended that you consider the view freakish. James. Excellent analysis. Very insightful / thoughtful! Very thought provoking! More?
Thanks to both of you.
I've been reluctant to write much about this because I've wanted to move the discussion way past "who's the real victim here?" The link between this thread and another you started may APPEAR to be tenuous but you mentioned that there is an insidious anxiety among European Americans that non-whites might one day overtake Europeans numerically and do unto whites what whites did unto non-whites. I honestly am no more qualified to say what "whites really think" than anyone else, having only the same evidence that's available to you, but it seems to me that a key aspect of what makes European Americans "white" is the lack of any imagination that they are privileged. I speak as someone immersed in free market fundamentalist dogma, as a lad, as a churchgoer, as a student, as a citizen, and as a writer of research papers. It's as if the language that could communicate such an idea is incomprehensible to whites Race is constructed entirely through a colonial action, like "extrusion." Europe is the seat of the "Commercial Revolution" (late 14th cent.) that leads to mastery of the global littoral by 1560's. A cluster of bureaucracies grow out of the Papal/Holy Roman Imperial core, spawning the institutions of the state the way a tree forms branches. Some of these develop into corporations or compacts for shipping labor and capital to the New World. The extrusion of Europe into the Americas was a huge, loosely integrated project. The Europeans had to defeat or assimilate Indians, and they needed captive labor from kidnapped Africans. The people displaced were the "Natives" (usually an overwhelming majority) while the "Slaves" were stripped of power through the new organization technology. Immigration was entirely unlike the slave trade; immigrants, of course, can leave if they don't like conditions, and the great majority tended to identify with the colonial power. They had a conflict with the earlier colonists (e.g., Scottish versus Irish), but the conflict was of class or section, not ethnicity. This triad of Master-Invader, Native, and Subaltern is repeated everywhere in the world, again and again. This is because imperialism is adaptive and opportunistic. In addition to this triad, there was a hierarchy of class and profession among the "Master-Invader," both in North America and everywhere else. The guys on top wanted more immigrants because immigrants meant labor, military power, and markets. The guys in the middle wanted no more immigrants because they are threatening their jobs, and housing prices are getting high. The guys on the bottom are either immigrants themselves or proletariats, who typically loathe the bourgeoisie but suspect the immigrant is an ally of the bourgeoisie. So I think white opposition to immigration is simply this; the vouluntary immigrant is an "honorary white" simply because under racism, colonial position is more important than ethnicity or aristocratic lineage (say, Jefferson's descendents via Sally Hemmings). The honor of descent from Jefferson would organically trump everything else, yet imperialism still functions so the system of aristocratic honor is constantly being squashed. Ethnic nationalism also gets squashed in the struggle to assimilate. Seriously, who cares if I'm Scot or Irish? Or Celt, as opposed to Teutonic? But whiteness has huge implications for my life prospects. "Honorary whiteness" is not as white as it sounds, though, because the immigrant is also connected to a country that may be in geopolitical conflict with the USA, or even have changed "race" by immigrating (e.g., from the Philippines to the USA = from "Native" to "H. White")? The Israelis have this burden of two millenia of racial hatred as "outsiders" and "subalterns, " which is partly absolved by the nuclear threat. If you're curious, I can explain. Great posts and analysis. If you care to comment further, I would like to hear more. Matthew Frye Jacobsen, who has written an excellent book about late nineteenth and early twentieth century immigration (Whiteness of a Different Color), has an interesting take on the term "free white person," its use in prescribing who could become a naturalized citizen of the US, and its implications in the history of immigration. But his work mainly is concerned with the period of 1876-1917. I'm intrigued by your observations of how this nativist view of "honorary whiteness" plays out in contemporary immigration policy and politics. Additional comments would be greatly appreciated.
I understand this. You can't help but see yourself as the prime example of the superset you belong to. It's like, "okay I know all the traits I can have are normal, now let me look at everyone else." That said, you obviously have the floor. Oh, this is delightful. Ourstorian, that was a really good link and I'm going to somehow point visitors to my site to it. Or just use it as one of those handy-dandy here-just-read-this-and-you'll-see-what-I-mean sites.
The countries of North America, the s. Pacific, the RSA, and Israel are all examples of countries that were extrusions of Europe. Notice all these societies displaced an indigenous civilization; employed some form of unfree labor (with landless Palestinians building the settlements being unfree by virtue of a take-it-or-leave-it labor market); and were settled by people with a ferociously adversarial relationship with the metropole. The predicament faced by Jewish Europeans needs, I think, no introduction; the European settlers in North America were often either rebels from their sovereign, or else, declassé proletarians, liquidated bourgeois, or otherwise generally perceived as canaille in the countries they fled. The process of stripping a person of class ties is often accompanied by silent violence and the most squalid savagery: a family seated on the street atop a heap of their worldly goods, nowhere to go, or a ragtag clutch of shivering tenants on the run from the land they've eked a living for generations, running because the landlord is legally empowered to escheat them of the commons. The difference between the USA and Israel was, firstly that the future USA was settled by organizations with little involvement in the state policies of European countries; immigration to the Americas continued during the revolutionary war, the war of 1812, and the American Civil War (during which most Europeans were vociferously pro-Confederate). The waves of immigration were sometimes favored, sometimes lamented, but seldom seriously managed until 1922. In contrast, the Zionist movement was totally subordinated to the top-down, bureaucratic machinery of the League of Nations/United Nations, the US State Department, the UK Foreign Office, the Quai d'Orsay, and yes, the Kremlin too, into squaring the circle and making of an imperialist act a humanitarian one. An anarcho-syndicalist movement whose main organ was the Histradrut (a federation of labor), the Zionist movement was promptly submerged beneath the country's unwieldy and hyperactive intelligence "community," which--like all intelligence communities--was primarily a broker for contracting out dirty tricks. Israel became to such intelligence activities what the Grocery Outlet is to booze and canned artichoke hearts. While Western diplomats engaged in demagoguery about international law and the "winds of change," the actual administrators were busy 5% with tossing bandaids to the evicted Palestininas, and 95% with enforcing the fait-accompli of Western military hegemony over the former Ottoman Empire. The tedious details of water policy and refugee "management" were just a headache for most humans in the West, particularly in 1948-1956. Oil and economics are important matters, to put it mildly; but both play a surprisingly small role in the formulation of national strategy (or, at least, did until the 1980's). This is one of the reasons I think my opinion is freakish: it's rather nerve-wracking to put down my books and gingerly announce something that seems so stunningly counterintuitive, so obviously... wrong... and yet, I think it's true. Oil and money are fungible; the leaders of this and other nations expect to be able to rely on oil or capital flowing through markets regardless of who "owns" the Persian Gulf. Military power, on the other hand, is made durable not through inventories of weapons (although that is a vital condition) but by networks of control, and projection of control. Bases and alliances are the thing that counts. Regardless of the accumulating rage towards the West in general and the USA in particular, OPEC member states have only once been especially effective at using oil power to hit at the great powers, and that effort backfired: the oil crisis of the '70's hit the non-OPEC 3rd world especially hard, and indeed made their states more dependent on the Transatlantic financial markets than ever before. The Cartel has never since used its power effectively, despite ample provocation. As for Europeans, the popular opposition to some US policies is irrelevant as far as capital markets are concerned: the flows of finance capital from the EU to the USA have only intensified, and while Brussels will do anything to drive the USA out of an industrial market such as passenger airplanes, it will do nothing to strike at the trade surplus in financial services the USA enjoys, and which it creates: that's because exporting capital to the USA for re-export to the 3rd world is part of the residual system of European imperialism. The attack on Boeing builds up the Red States at the expense of the Blue ones, and Brussels/Toulouse knows this quite well; its elites require Bush, whether they like him or not. Struggles between individual Trans-European countries (like the USA in WW2, or the Franco-Prussian War) are invariably matched by a sectional war in the belligerants. They are civil wars as well as national wars. Also, in addition to shooting wars, there are diplomatic "strikes" (like de Gaulle's withdrawal from the NATO unified command structure in 1965) or the trade wars, which pit consumers of each nation against the manufacturers in the same nation, or massive editorial campaigns of demonization. These are campagins of sectional [re]conquest within the TEP, and often serve as efforts to defeat a progressive element in the target nation rather than the acknowledged enemy. That's why the EU is so intent on taking down Bush's political opponents rather than his sectional beneficiaries: the USA would cease to be an agent of global capital if the political foment of the 1960's just went on unabated. But openly supporting Bush is not feasible for the European functionary, and would expose each European state to the obligation of committing itself to policies that are hateful to the 3rd world. This is disturbing to me because it's difficult to think of a way out. In all honesty, I have to admit there's no magic bullet. The far left either undermines the proximate left, or else pushes a false dogma of salvation from the danger of becoming imperialist. Hence, Soviet imperialism was simply assumed not to exist by 3rd Internationalist Communists, and the socialist parties of Europe are--in their own way--quite jingoistic on behalf of their own countries. The conventional left promises secular salvation from the original sin of imperialism. Obviously, the right IS the problem, so it needs no further discussion. The proximate left (liberals and such) are often blinded by the fact that the changes they require are impossible "at the margins"; for example, the USA must make a radical break with its past foreign policies in order to end future wars like this one in Iraq. A kinder gentler version of what we are doing now won't cut it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The introduction of nuclear weapons in the hands of a 3rd world nation is assumed to be unlike the scenario of the major powers. In my experience, Americans are pretty reasonable, patient people when dealing with things they know directly. On abstract matters, anyone (self included here) can nurture the most insane, silly, nasty ideas for years. But on every military conflict we've been involved with since 1945, the US military has entertained the use of nuclear weapons. This is true for proxy wars, too. Without direct personal knowledge of Americans, and assuming that national character is sufficient to explain history, I would conclude from this that Americans are genocidal monsters. I must insist that this is not so. Hence, my assertion that nuclear weapons are an inherently totalitarian weapon, and they tend to "neutralize" democracy. The stability and pragmatism of American democracy means nothing when Curtis LeMay is running the Strategic Air Command. So it is for other countries. It's embarrassing, but honest, for me to admit I don't think an Arab nation is more likely to use a nuclear missile than the USA is, given comparable circumstances. Many nations with nuclear weapons are probably more likely to than a few, but I'm not so sure of even that anymore. On the other hand, the anxiety of such a weapon being turned against the T.E.P. in an anti-colonial struggle is extraordinarily dangerous. There can be no situations that bear comparison to it. Losing a cold war is one thing; losing a colonial war is quite another. For this reason, should a future regime in Egypt win control of a nuclear missile, I think the transformation of the Jewish people from subaltern caste to full "whiteness" could well be completed. "I think the transformation of the Jewish people from subaltern caste to full "whiteness" could well be completed."
I think that line is hilarious. However, I disagree that the status of Jewish people in America fully conforms to the notion of the "subaltern." Granted. the one drop rule operative in the American version of the white supremacist ethos refuses Jews full membership in the white establishment. But the Jewish Lobby in this country is far from being "subaltern" in their access to and exercise of political power. Recently two American university professors delivered a scathing critique and analysis of AIPAC and its influence. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article has been raising a ruckus all over the blogoshpere since it appeared recently in the London Review of Books. It is a must-read, and should be as widely circulated as possible. The following excerpt from their article is illustrative of the stranglehold AIPAC has on the political process in this country: "Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’ (my added emphasis). And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them." Nor are academic institutions free from scrutiny and intimidation: "The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity." Your point about OPEC's historical inability to use oil to exercise power is well taken. Iran's nuclear ambitions, if realized, certainly would bring about a realignment of power-relations in the so-called Middle East, and perhaps globally, with more immediacy than the manipulation of oil markets by OPEC. Ah, but that's the reason why I think my opinion is freakish. Most money in US politics is from corporations. Most comment on Israel either assumes the US is pro-Israel because of inordinate Jewish influence, or else assumes that nothing Israel's state does is wrong. I agree with neither: the US (and the other Western powers) uses Israel as a subaltern class-state (Standenstaat) because it can. The constant bickering with the Palestinians and other Arabs serves the interests of the Western powers, not the citizens of Israel. They are victims of Western imperialism, albeit of a vaster less grievous kind, than the Palestinians themselves.
Sorry, I have to run now. The constant bickering with the Palestinians and other Arabs serves the interests of the Western powers, not the citizens of Israel. They are victims of Western imperialism, albeit of a vaster less grievous kind, than the Palestinians themselves.I understand that too. It's kinda like how overseers were used both to buffer the actual rulers from the messy parts of slavery but to distract the overseers (as failed competitors to the plantation system) from their personal loss. The pattern, anyway, not the specifics. I see an equally faint parallel with using indentured servitude to establish your colony. "...the US (and the other Western powers) uses Israel as a subaltern class-state (Standenstaat) because it can."
I agree that Israel serves the interests of Euro-America in the manner you outlined above, but I think the verdict is still out in terms of who benefits the most from this relationship. Moreover, Jewish influence on "Western" culture in the form of Judeo-Christianity is a pervasive and decisive force in the development and sustenance of Western imperialism and hegemony. While I don't subscibe to those idiotic "Jewish conspiracy" theories, I don't regard the State of Israel, with its military prowess and incomparable intelligence agencies and apparatus, as merely a "victim" of Western powers and Western imperialism. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, and the numerous spy operations they have launched against the US, particularly in the years leading up to 911, and the lack of a serious response by the US government, suggest that Euro-America views Israel as a formidable foe. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, and the numerous spy operations they have launched against the US, particularly in the years leading up to 911, and the lack of a serious response by the US government, suggest that Euro-America views Israel as a formidable foe. ...or as an occasionally unstable ally. Israel is no threat to Europe or the USofA. Given that we're their suppliers, a war of attrition would last a couple of weeks. Just like the Iraq invasion. And the aftermath would be messier. Israel's major weapon/tool against the "West" is that its strongest supporters are thoroughly integrated in the West's economy. Nice..., I can damn near hear the disks whirring and the fans running hard to cool the collective processor arrays cycling portions of this TEP model. Please be sure to include the Birth and Death of the South African Nuclear Weapons Programme into the analysis. From where I sit, that program seems almost axiomatic to some of what's under consideration - given the bargain basement economics involved with it, Sadaam's attempt to acquire an in-theatre BIGASSGUN, Israel's involvement with South Africa, etc...., Nice link.
Realistically, if the new government hadn't agreed to the NPT, Mandela's ass would still be in jail. I agree that Israel serves the interests of Euro-America in the manner you outlined above, but I think the verdict is still out in terms of who benefits the most from this relationship. Moreover, Jewish influence on "Western" culture in the form of Judeo-Christianity is a pervasive and decisive force in the development and sustenance of Western imperialism and hegemony Yes, however this was more true in 1900 than in 1973. In 1900, the West was far more obviously tied ideologically to Christianity; by '73, the West had become more secular in character. Nevertheless, between 1933 and 1945 a larger population of Jewish Europeans+Jewish Americans than exists today was unable to prevent their near-extermination in Europe. Prominent Jewish Americans like Secr. of the Treasury Morgenthau, et al., were unable to prevail up the US government to admit more refugees from the Final Solution, and so on. In 1946-1948, the USA, France, and the USSR agreed on the creation of Israel (the UK was cooler to the idea); later in '48, a showtrial in Prague kicked off a series of expulsions and arrests of the survivng Jewish members of the Soviet Communist Party. So, by the measure of events that occurred shortly before and shortly afterwards, it is impossible to believe that the Jewish populations of Europe, North America, or the USSR could reliably sway events. In Lilienthal's hyperventilating The Zionist Connection, he attributes a staggering number of obscure events to the machinations of Jews or their allies among American liberals (Walter Winchel and Drew Pearson, for example, supposedly hounded James Forrestal to suicide by accusing him of antisemitism; in point of fact, Forrestal was suffering from severe mental illness that manifested itself in other ways, etc. etc.) Almost every single "fact" Lilienthal cites is either provably inaccurate or else not a real explanation of whatever it is supposed to explain. I'm puzzled by the insistance that Jewish organizations control everything (how?). Lilienthal argues that the Holocaust gave the Jewish population an endless blank check for demands, but the American Indians received no such blank check. Antisemitism in the USA is generally recognized to have diminished over a decade AFTER 1945; and before the 1930's, it was generally a manifestation of class reverse-snobbery (the "better sort" of people supposedly were above antisemitism, but were in reality protected by their status from competition or contact with Jews). Tens of thousands of Jewsih refugees from the 3rd Reich were turned back from immigration to the USA. Why were the great powers suddenly willing to award the Jewish refugees a patch on the map (knowing full well the Haganah would be required to actually conquer it from the Palestians and their Arab allies)? If "the Jews" had imposed this through a (mysteriously) captive US press, why didn't they also induce the Great Powers to conquer it for them? The ruling elites of China got the USA to defend Taiwan for them. So again, it looks like this was an 1870's-style land grant to unwitting Scandinavian immigrants, except that the Jewish refugees were not duped, but given a Hobson's choice: fight or die. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, and the numerous spy operations they have launched against the US, particularly in the years leading up to 911, and the lack of a serious response by the US government, suggest that Euro-America views Israel as a formidable foe. The confusion this aroused should be cleared up if you realize that nations, particularly our nation, are never cohesive. Israeli intelligence, especially in the early years, was surprisingly prone to fratricidal fiascos. Several times, the new nation nearly erupted into civil war. Likewise, the US state is often divided against itself, and against its citizens. Very frequently, US covert action makes no sense at all unless you understand that it is targeted against the US population, or even other organs of the US government. Whereas, suppose you accept (just for the sake of a mental experiment) that my version is correct: that the Western powers are merely exploiting the descendants of Jewish refugees in Israel: the sudden and perversely-timed decline in judeaphobia is not explained by American remorse over failure to save the Jews from the Holocaust, but rather, by the fact that Jews are associated with Israel and Israel is associated with proxy jingoism. Similarly, the passionate conversion of evangelical protestants from antisemitism to philosemitism is not due to Jewish infiltrators in the Southern Baptist Convention or the Missouri Synod of Lutherans, but by the association of Israel with a righteous crusade against racial aliens. The supposed aversion for judeaphobia that Americans suddenly developed in the late 20th centuy was really the equivalent of SUV's sprouting "support our troops" ribbons. If the war ends and the troops suddenly become civilians who want to retire, will the adulation they enjoy survive? Will conservatives and warhawks agitate for a fabulous pension program for them? No, they will suddenly demand that vets cope with the hurly-burly of the market. As you can, my theory actually explains a lot more than the "Jewish tail wagging the American dog" theory. The latter, in fact, explains almost nothing. Even if you provide a long list of prominent Jewish journalists, they still constitute a minority of the total number of journalists; and many are among the most prominent critics of Israel. So they have influence only in what direction, which amounts to the same thing as saying they don't really have influence. Let me make a bizarre analogy. Suppose I want to argue (and I do not, but suppose I did) that African Americans are mostly conservatives, and the Conservative movement in America is largely their doing. This is, frankly, an hallucinogenic notion. But I could make this argument by cramming this comment box with the names of prominent Black conservatives. Obviously the flaw in the argument is that, if Alan Keyes can "influence" US policy, but Cornell West or Henry Louis Gates cannot, then it seems obvious [to me at least] that none of them have [much] influence, and Keyes is merely doing the polemical toil of some hidden white employer. Now there's a freakish concept! The supposed aversion for judeaphobia that Americans suddenly developed in the late 20th century was really the equivalent of SUV's sprouting "support our troops" ribbons. True dat. Jews who insist on being real Jewish are more tolerated than accepted. I believe the standard race war fantasy has the Jews lined up right after the Jigaboos...even before the Mexicans.
Picture a landscape of wounded, armed angry white men roaming Middle America. I think they'll come up with something.
Depleted Uranium....,
Why exactly should I give a phuk - even in the abstract - about what happens to Israel? Whether in South Africa, or the good old US of Murka, I see no credible Jewish allies. Bush makes the ultimate commitment to Israel ..., merely rhetorical flapdoodle on a par with the committment to rebuild new orleans? Why exactly should I give a phuk - even in the abstract - about what happens to Israel?We're not discussing what happens to Israel. We're discussing macro power relations. But to answer your question, you need to be up on what happens to Israel because they're in the middle of the tinderbox. Being at least generally aware of the major currents in world affairshelps you estimate your more immediate conditions more accurately. Many people care very deeply about what goes on in Israel because, for one thing, the creation and endless prodding of that country has caused immense suffering. About eight million Palestinians, including four million in the former Mandate of Palestine, have had their lives utterly ruined. One of the best-endowed nations of the Arab world, Lebanon, was subjected to "collateral damage" as a result of the Palestinian diaspora plus Israeli efforts to neutralize that diaspora.
However, there is also the matter of the Jewish citizens of Israel. Like African Americans, they have known horrible cruelty and injustice in the hands of fully-accredited white people. Then they were transformed into an instrument for inflicting still more cruelty and injustice. That likewise describes the citizens of this country, including me. So, for me to sit in judgment of the people of Israel is the most condign hypocrisy. All oppressed people, likewise, have in large numbers joined the militaries of the nations that oppressed them. I suppose one could pass judgment on the Clarence Thomases, the Colin Powells, the Yitzhak Shamirs, the Ben Nighthorse-Campbells, and the Michelle Malkinses of the world--condemn them and contemn them, disregarding them as sell-outs or worse. But I cannot do that. It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apartThere's another reason why this is worthy of your interest. In the still calm of honest reflection, the tendency we have to feel anger and alienation from wrongdoers is seen to be a form of protection for our moral narcissism. We want to believe if the world only shared our common decency, it would be a happy place. But the world does share our common decency. Often, a clean conscience is just another privilege. If I had had to squabble in fear for the means of survival, would I have acted any better? This is the lesson of the Milgram Experiment: how easily people are manipulated into doing bad. The Zimbardo "Stanford Prison" Experiment, likewise, readily degenerated into a disaster after six days. The narrative I linked to is frankly terrifying, and I think it is very revealing about how our common humanity can be derailed into brutality. The lesson I learned from this was that it was wrong to revile "perpetrators" as moral monsters; such a judgment tended to blind one to the common responsibilities we have as humans to anticipate situations like Abu Ghraib Prisoner abuse, and prevent them. This is why I care very deeply about all of these people. Being made into a perpetrator through a Hobson's choice is profoundly traumatizing, and it's easy to disparage the perpetrator's moral claims. In many cases, it transpires the perpetrator suffers little; in other cases, he may rush into the opportunity, because of a lifetime of conditioning. In contrast, the victim is dead, or bereft, or maimed. But by acknowledging the moral claims of both, there is at last a hope for some moral progress towards a more humane world.
Assimilationists surrender their humanity in direct proportion to their assimilation. After all, one's way of life is one's polity.
Our differences on this point may not reduce to moral narcissism...., The incomplete accounting given in your TEP commentary for the outlier nuclear extrusions, Israel and South Africa, is troubling. Frankly, Truth and Reconciliation seems vastly less cathartic than what's coming down the pike for Israel. So also the indeterminate conflict resolution arising from Cuban intervention in Angola. What's that I hear flap, flap, flapping? Hmm, I do believe some chickens may be winging their way home to roost. Given the Bolivarian Revolution percolating along so nicely across vital patches of this hemisphere, talk of acknowledging the moral claims of perpetrators seems exceedingly premature at this juncture. The microcosm of one irredeemably racist nation shows very clearly why it's too late for regrets all the way round. Israel is no threat to Europe or the USofA. Given that we're their suppliers, a war of attrition would last a couple of weeks.
Just like the Iraq invasion. And the aftermath would be messier. Israel's major weapon/tool against the "West" is that its strongest supporters are thoroughly integrated in the West's economy. Israel is regarded as a potentially formiable foe to Euro-American interests for the reasons stated in your last sentence, P6. My intention upthread was not to suggest a scenario where they would go to war with Western powers, but the reason why the West is reluctant to police and constrain them. Israel's settler-colonialist regime, apartheid policies, and illegal occupation of the West Bank have destablized the entire region and undermined Euro-America's relations with the Arab world. Given the US dependency on Arab oil, I imagine Israel must be far more important to Euro-American interests than merely serving as a colonial outpost in the Middle East, or functioning as part of a "clever" Western plot to keep the region in turmoil and thus manageable. Even if Euro-America's plan is to use Israel in such a fashion, and the Israelis agree to be complicit in their own exploitation, they are perfectly capable of devising and implementing their own "counter-operations" to ensure their survival and protect their own interests. To put it in the venacular: They know pimps can be pimped (ask the local vice cop on the beat). Many have argued the US invaded Iraq at the instigation of Israel and its apparatchiks in the US government, and that Iran is next on the horizon for the same reason. As James pointed out above, there are fissures and factions in Israeli politics, as there are in Euro-America, no nation or culture exist without internal divisions. Nevertheless, Jews have a history of pogroms, genocide and judeophobia in the West as a constant inducement for them to monitor, police and manipulate their so-called Euro-American allies. Again, I think the verdict is still out as to who currently benefits the most from the Euro-American-Israeli alliance. From a miitary and intelligence standpoint, Israel seems to be clearly ahead in the pimp game. In exchange for fighting Euro-America's colonial wars in the Middle East they have been given access to Euro-America's best military technology (Israel has the world's largest fleet of F-16s outside the US), and the US has provided them with intelligence that it doesn't even share with its NATO allies. The Israeli army has become one of the most high-tech militaries in the world. The following brief except from here illustrates the point: "Currently Israel is the only country in the world with an anti-ballistic missile defense system ("Hetz", or Arrow) and working with the USA on development of a tactical high energy laser system against medium range rockets (called Nautilus THEL). Israel has the independent capability of launching reconnaissance satellites into orbit (a capability which only Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, Japan and India hold). Both the satellites (Ofeq) and the launchers (Shavit) were developed by the Israeli security industries." Israel has a population of 6 million. It ranks as the 16th wealthiest country in the world, with Israelis enjoying a per capita income high than Ireland, Spain or Saudi Arabia. Its GNP is higher than the combined GNP of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the occupied Territories. With .001% of the world's population, it receives over one-third of total US foreign aid. Since 1949, the US has given Israel more than 134 billion dollars. What other Standenstaat (subaltern class-state) in history has been thusly equipped and funded? Moreover, what other Standenstaat has had the benefit of having so many of its supporters and citizens-by-proxy so thoroughly integrated into the highest echelons of the Metropole? Assimilationists surrender their humanity in direct proportion to their assimilation. After all, one's way of life is one's polity.
I think you are talking about something quite different from assimilation. For example, the great majority of people who immigrate to North America speak English, work under a distinctively North American-style of capitalism, and have children who will marry spouses with different ethnic backgrounds. Besides, you are insisting on condemning people for doing what they must to survive. This is not an insight into how the world works, it's the opposite. It's blind anger. The incomplete accounting given in your TEP commentary for the outlier nuclear extrusions, Israel and South Africa, is troubling. Frankly, Truth and Reconciliation seems vastly less cathartic than what's coming down the pike for Israel. So also the indeterminate conflict resolution arising from Cuban intervention in Angola. I'm sorry, but could you explain what you mean? What's that I hear flap, flap, flapping? Hmm, I do believe some chickens may be winging their way home to roost. Unfortunately, the metaphor of chickens coming home to roost is very misleading; the subtext is that the consequences of bad deeds are a natural, inevitable form of justice. But that's hardly ever true. T The microcosm of one irredeemably racist nation shows very clearly why it's too late for regrets all the way round. I don't believe people are irredeemably anything. What does that mean, anyway? Do you seriously believe Israel is in this situation because its citizens are evil? Somehow they are moral monsters? Whereas some other category of people aren't? Again, I think the verdict is still out as to who currently benefits the most from the Euro-American-Israeli alliance. From a miitary and intelligence standpoint, Israel seems to be clearly ahead in the pimp game. In exchange for fighting Euro-America's colonial wars in the Middle East they have been given access to Euro-America's best military technology (Israel has the world's largest fleet of F-16s outside the US), and the US has provided them with intelligence that it doesn't even share with its NATO allies. The Israelis are stuck in an eternal war with their neighbors, internationally isolated, and reviled. People blame them for a situation that is so obviously out of their hands that they naturally develop a complex. Israelis have a huge fleet of F-16's because they have been stuck with being janissaries of the TEP. That was never a job they wanted, but it was required of them. One could take the example of this poor fellow, who was faced with destitution or re-enlistment in the military, and say he is a winner because he has access to an M-16A3. I suppose I could rattle off all manner of other cool stuff he gets, such as access to the VA system of health care ("The 2nd largest US department, by budget!") or a chance to ride around in an M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, or the opportunity to abuse Iraqis with impunity. But he doesn't see it that way, and neither do I. (Incidently, you might snort at my comparison of Israel with Juan the inductee. But if Juan were admitted and made a career in the Army, and if he survived long enough--all likely outcomes--then he would be eventually be living a comfortable middle class life, with his days in the shelter only a memory. And if you met him then, you would hold his service in the Army against him and dismiss his protests that he was desperate in 2006 when he re-enlisted. I would not.) Israel has a population of 6 million. It ranks as the 16th wealthiest country in the world, with Israelis enjoying a per capita income high than Ireland, Spain or Saudi Arabia. Its GNP is higher than the combined GNP of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the occupied Territories. With .001% of the world's population, it receives over one-third of total US foreign aid. Since 1949, the US has given Israel more than 134 billion dollars. What other Standenstaat (subaltern class-state) in history has been thusly equipped and funded? Moreover, what other Standenstaat has had the benefit of having so many of its supporters and citizens-by-proxy so thoroughly integrated into the highest echelons of the Metropole? I believe Israel is not really a sovereign nation, because it is so dependent upon its integral part in the TEP economy. You ask what other Standenstaat in history has been thusly equiped and funded? Well, what about the antebellum South? Not by state policy, and not with high tech gizmos, but with capital transfers from the UK. It was a different time, and the technologies available were different, but the transfer was huge and prolonged, and it was motivated by self-interest. There's also a tradition of the "development state," in which aid flows to a country's industry to create a powerful Standenstaat there (South Korea, or South Vietnam). I don't draw the huge distinction between the public and private sectors that others do, and I think the distinction between US foreign aid and that other TEP nations is far less important than others would think. That's because I think it's an illusion that the USA and other TEP nations are really autonomous from each other. US foreign aid may be the single largest hunk of aid in the TEP, but if you counted the EU as a single country, then of course its foreign aid would far surpass that of the USA. The fact that the EU's aid programs are divided among many countries, to me, is not terribly important. When you ask what other Standenstaat has... so many supporters integrated into the highest echelons of the Metropole, you are assuming that Israel has infiltrated the USA and thereby controls its policy; and that without this infiltration, the USA would behave differently (and presumably, more morally). This is why I said my point of view was freakish. I don't think anything of the kind. There is a passionate emotional support for Israel among gentile European Americans that is clearly transcends the influence of "Jewish propaganda"; it is real and sincere. It exists because many gentile Americans saw the Israelis as engaged in the same sort of struggle for mastery over their environment, as they themselves were engaged in. In fact, I've found more skepticism about Israel and Zionism among Jewish Americans, than among white Protestants. In many communities of the USA, support for Israel coexists with a complete ignorance of Judaism. Hence, the Dominionist theology, which is pretty patronizing to Jews. The reason is that Israelis are imagined to be fulfilling a "manifest destiny." I'm not sure why my POV is so freakish. Why would a leftist find it so hard to accept that the Jewish population of Israel is being exploited by opportunistic white gentile Americans? That a small, politically invulnerable elite has managed to hijack the fears and vulnerabilities of an historically persecuted group, and throw them against a 3rd world population? Arm them to do the job, and make them even more dependent on the metropole? Why, on this one subject, must the left invariably switch polarities and absolve the West of responsibility? And let's settle the matter of the oil: the oil flows, and has continued to flow, regardless of "relations" with the Arab world. The petrodollars flow into US banks, and did at the height of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The EU publicly condemns Israeli activities but sells them avionics and weapons control systems. It doesn't sell them Eurofighters, because that would be too politically damaging, but it does sell them electronics and spare parts. EU-based capital management firms own huge chunks of the US military industrial complex and invest in Israeli industry, always under the cloak of anonymity. Evidentally they don't take seriously their own rhetoric about restraining Israel. Jews have a history of pogroms, genocide and judeophobia in the West as a constant inducement for them to monitor, police and manipulate their so-called Euro-American allies. So they control those allies? Sorry, I don't buy it. The history of persecution didn't get them refuge during the Final Solution. Suddenly, the techniques work and the TEP dumps survivors of the Holocaust in the most hostile environment possible? The Israelis can be likened unto the slave armies of the 12th-16th century Middle East or East Asia: yes, those armies were well-equipped too, and sometimes they staged coups in the countries they controlled. But they remained slaves and soldiers; a peaceful, secure life was denied to them. Even if Euro-America's plan is to use Israel in such a fashion, and the Israelis agree to be complicit in their own exploitation, they are perfectly capable of devising and implementing their own "counter-operations" to ensure their survival and protect their own interests. The whole point of leftism as an abstract ideology is that it rejects privilege. "Innocently" enjoying the Western standard of living that you do, while condemning the Israelis for theirs, is the epitome of privilege.
The difference is moral anyway...as significant as the difference between 10 pounds of bricks and 10 pounds of rocks.
Duh. And you were doing so well...
Allow me a random insertion or two: Israel is not "the Jews." And its government may well relate to its population like the Bush regime relates to us.
I've been thinking about this some more, and it occurs to me the difference is that, whereas others seem to think bad things happen because of evil people, I no longer believe such things. When a lot of people embrace the cause of the Palestinians, it's natural to reverse the common narrative of Palestinian terrorists vs. productive Israelis; suddenly the Israelis are perpetrators, and no context will suffice to give them a common humanity with the outraged leftist. I blame the Cold War for this sort of thinking.
In contrast, I see it like this: if you say "To hell with Israel, they're the oppressors!" then you have no lesson to draw from this. The notion that "they'll get theirs one day" may be satisfying, but it really prevents one from being part of the solution. In effect, you cease to be a leftist because there is no longer any ideological content. The Palestinians are miserable because of Jews, and their overweening power over the American political and economic establishment. Well, if you think that, then the role of imperialism, capitalism, and other forms of organization cease to play a role. They are neutralized. I have to say I'm not entirely proud of the fact that I've become more and more skeptical of the concept of human guilt or innocence; but I have. So often the difference between a war criminal and a civilian citizen of a rich country is merely that the former happened to get caught in the frontier between the rich world and the poor. It's so rare for the guilty to be held accountable anyway that hoping for some "revolutionary" last judgment is really a fantastical dream of self-justification. I would like to point out that Frantz Fanon's appendix to The Wretched of the Earth describes his efforts to treat imperialism itself as a form of mental illness; the case histories shed a lot of light on how he meant some of the more difficult passages of his book. He recognized that his audience was far more likely to identify with the European settlers in Algeria than with the FLN; he "defends" the use of mass bombings against the population as arising from the inner struggle of the revolutionary to achieve liberty. Of course, he is not really defending anything; as a foreigner who attached himself to the revolution, he was hardly in a position to make an independent and free judgment of the matter. However, he is explaining the process (in the psychological sense) whereby revolutionaries sought to reclaim their liberty through violence. I am advised that Fanon certainly did not share the will to commit violence against Europeans; he was married to one.
You have looked into the Tao. Seriously. Guilt an innocence come into play after the fact. No one gives it a thought in the heat of the moment.
I'm not an immigrant. I have no desire to melt into this "pot". It is far less difficult to be in this place, yet not of this place, than you seem willing to imagine. Evidently James, your modern American monism doesn't accomodate the profound pluralism of the "abducted". Stripped of all Hobsonian pretensions, there is very little to distinguish what you've said on this thread from what DW constantly sought to proclaim.
Easily. In their embrace of Hamas, the Palestinians have rejected subordination/amalgamation into the monist consumer cesspool of western modernity, as also the Cubans who have resisted prostituting themselves for 4 decades and have given rise to a genuinely developmental culture with a sustainable ecological footprint. One only wishes that the ANC had managed not to prostrate itself into a less than subaltern TEP satrapy. Yielding to the lowest common consumerist denominator has proven to be the culturicidal deathknell to many non-TEP peoples.
Naivete..., the inevitability I refer to is simple thermodynamic inevitability. The Bolivaran revolution has Murka by the short and curlies because the rotten vagina dentata get's 15% of her gluttonous energy demands supplied by Venezuela. All the comeuppance written out on this wall is purely self-inflicted and simply inevitable. 14 permanent forward bases in Iraq, like all the kings horsemen and all the kings men, will not suffice to keep the flow of that Iraqi sweet light crude from being disrupted.
Israel is purely Hasnamussian...., as was its special ally South Africa. Soulessness was the normative condition under apartheid, and Israel is a starkly apartheid society.
Many black folk in America DO enjoy the paradoxical status of innocent enjoyment of the western way of life, white negritude is a categorical impossibility, and Israel proved its irredeemable soullessness when it allied itself with South Africa. Israel is not "the Jews."
Yes, I tried to make that point myself up here. That was the point I was trying to make about, say, Alan Keyes versus Cornell West, et al. If you only pay attention to what, say, Meir Kahane does, and ignore Noam Chomsky, then of course you will assume the TEP supports Israel as a result of the large population of Jews in positions of influence in the USA. If you recognize that the TEP does what it does out of its own greed, rather than a puzzling reversal of its former bigotry against Jews, then you will not think my POV about the matter is so entirely freakish. "The Israelis are stuck in an eternal war with their neighbors, internationally isolated, and reviled. People blame them for a situation that is so obviously out of their hands that they naturally develop a complex. ... I believe Israel is not really a sovereign nation, because it is so dependent upon its integral part in the TEP economy. " This isn't about a "blame game." It's about recognizing that Israel, its dependency notwithstanding, does not lack its own agency and agenda, one that does not always coincide with that of its TEP masters, and that it has its own imperialist and hegemonic ambitions for the region. Moreover, its value to Euro-America as a Standenstaat is highly questionable. The following quote from Mearsheimer and Walt's article places this point in perspective:
Rather than the poor victims of circumstances as you claim, the Israeli's have committed war crimes for decades and continue to do so despite international condemnation. Again, from Mearsheimer and Walt:
"You ask what other Standenstaat in history has been thusly equiped and funded? Well, what about the antebellum South? Not by state policy, and not with high tech gizmos, but with capital transfers from the UK. It was a different time, and the technologies available were different, but the transfer was huge and prolonged, and it was motivated by self-interest." R.W. Fogel in his analysis of the rise and fall of American slavery notes that the South in 1860, if considered separately, ranked as the fourth most prosperous country in the world, "more prosperous than France, Germany, Denmark or any of the countries of Europe" (see: Without Consent or Contract 1989, p. 87). This acquisition of wealth was not accomplished through the transfer of technology or capital from the UK, but through the North's complicity with the slaveocracy. Look to New England first to understand how the South became an economic powerhouse. "When you ask what other Standenstaat has... so many supporters integrated into the highest echelons of the Metropole, you are assuming that Israel has infiltrated the USA and thereby controls its policy; and that without this infiltration, the USA would behave differently (and presumably, more morally). This is why I said my point of view was freakish. I don't think anything of the kind. There is a passionate emotional support for Israel among gentile European Americans that is clearly transcends the influence of "Jewish propaganda"; it is real and sincere." I'm not assuming that Israel has infiltrated the USA, the evidence is out there in plain sight (Mearsheimer and Walt deal extensively with this issue in their article). What I find freakish in your analysis is a kind of reductionism that treats all non-TEP members as subaltern Standenstaat. Perhaps you should consider a third category, one that recognizes a different mix of cliency and agency and the exercise of power and pursuit of self-interests that don't coincide with the TEPagenda, or that may be counter to it. I know...but sometimes you explain things and sometimes you have to just say things. I watch for times when we circle around and point at the center but never actually deal with it. Then I just say it. If you recognize that the TEP does what it does out of its own greed, rather than a puzzling reversal of its former bigotry against Jews, then you will not think my POV about the matter is so entirely freakish. I feel your view is pretty reasonable. I just don't consider "Jews" when I consider the actions os Israel-the-nation. If I did, I'd be even harder on Israel-the-nation. I understand there are those, progressive and conservative, that don't separate the two. I just make it clear that I'm not among them. FIRESTORMOf Israel, Harvard and David DukeSunday, March 26, 2006; Page B05
International relations scholars John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University ignited a furious debate last week with their lengthy essay "The Israel Lobby," appearing in the London Review of Books. Their argument -- that the influence of a powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States threatens U.S. national security -- has reverberated through academic and policy circles, the media and the blogosphere. A sampling of their article and the ongoing controversy: Wall Street Journal Commentary. "No wonder David Duke, white supremacist and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, claimed that this article "validated every major point I have been making since even before the [Iraq] war started." I'm surprised Ruth Wisse didn't add a few Nazis in the mix to smear Mearsheimer and Walt. This species of incendiary spittle is only the tip of the rhetorical backlash. Israeli apologists like Alan Dershowitz have been flogging Mearsheimer and Walt daily since the article appeared. But M&W are reputable scholars, with sterling reputations and credentials. Attacking them or debating them will only further expose AIPACs influence and America's ignorance and folly. Also check out Eric Alterman's take on the "Pushback." I plan to get floor seats for this show!
The Lobby Strikes Back
Harvard study of Israeli lobby's influence costs the dean of the Kennedy School his job..., The firing of Dean Walt is an outrage, one that should be met with a storm of indignation. That the Amen Corner would even attempt it – let alone go on the record as taking credit for it – is a testament to the Lobby's enduring and unchallenged power. It shows how the Lobby operates, and why they must be stopped before any real debate over the foreign policy of this country can be conducted. The reasons for this extreme defensiveness on the part of the Lobby are not hard to discern. If they are the prime movers of U.S. foreign policy, then they do indeed have a lot to answer for. As the consequences of the Iraq war roll across our television screens, tracing a path of blood and mindless destruction, we have to wonder: who got us here? We have to question their motivations. And we have to ask: Why? Who lied us into war? For whose sake did 2,300 American soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, die? Whose interests were served? The tip of the spear Mearsheimer and Walt have pricked the Lobby with is the contention that they were the decisive influence in pushing us into war with Iraq. And the howls that are coming from right, left, and center are proof enough that they have struck home. |
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And a lot less in others. Fear is Israel's social glue. The fear Americans have that the terrorists will come and nuke our cows pales before the national terror that will sweep Israel on confirmation that an Arab country has The Bomb. They will drop a security regime in place that will be positively...Hessian in nature.
I have a weird, freakish view of this matter that I have never seen expressed elsewhere.
Part 1: N. America, W.Europe, and some other countries are part of what is, in reality, a single unified meta-state. The degree of unification has oscillated over very long periods of time, but in general the trend has been towards expansion, unification, opposition to unification (movements towards autarky), and eventual synthesis. The process is far too complicated to explain here, but essentially I'm speaking of a process of constructing a bureaucratic, industrial system in new regions. N. Europe's institutions of industrial bureaucratic capitalism expanded into N. America, while Japan's and Russia's developed independently.
Part 2: Israel is a recent extrusion of the Trans-European Project (T.E.P.). The Jewish refugee population was exploited ruthlessly by gentile colonial powers; gradually the state fell under the control of military intelligence, which did not interfere [much] with civilian rule because it kept the operations side in check. However, intelligence required constant access to assets which it could obtain only through constant collusion with European or European-American powers operating in the region. Hence, ties with the RSA, with France (to '63), with Portugal (to '74), or, of course, the US (after 1958). Efforts to work with the USSR limped along after 1956, but never seem to have amounted to much.
Part 3: the creation of Israel was essentially a final act of thoughtless Western judeaphobia; of course, it was popular among Zionists, but it was adopted by the vast majority of the Jewish world as the only plausible shot at survival. This is the primary human motive. Humans usually do operate within the framework of an Hobson's choice, which is why opinion polls are useless for gauging public opinion. The "choice" (be an Israeli or die) was inflicted by the T.E.P. because of its lack of regard for any refugee population, particular one of Jews. But at least the Jewish survivors were awarded T.E.P.'s self-serving military alliance. Israel has served as one of many central exchanges of global intelligence, without the least regard for the wishes of Israelis themselves.
Part 4: Israel was useful despite the proximity of oil. The Western powers never expected Israel to conquer the Persian Gulf, and indeed, may never have expected the Gulf to be as important as it eventually became. But they also never expected Arab anger towards Israel to amount to much. A few humiliations, perhaps, were expected to break their pride. And in fact, historians such as Flappan (The Birth of Israel) argue that the Arab states never did constitute a serious threat to Israel. But Israel was a useful general contractor for the new mixture of intelligence and operations (one might almost call it, "intelligence-intensive military operations") of Cold War-era combat. The technology of warfare was developed largely in Israel--again, without the consent or serious chance of consequential dissent by Israeli citizens (Hobson's choice again).
Part 5: the Arab states are particularly vulnerable to nuclear weapons. Even medium-yield devices would inflict millions of deaths. Israel is also vulnerable, of course, but as I have iterated, Israeli citizens (or those of any other country) have no role in the matter. A nuclear retaliation against an Arab state might easily be executed by the 7th Fleet. A nuclear war between Israel and its neighbors would simply be taken over by the T.E.P. As with all other societies, the nature of nuclear war brooks no consideration of public preferences. Nuclear weapons are deployed in secrecy and no serious discussion of their existence occurs, anywhere. Even India, whose polity lacks many of the worst features of the T.E.P., has never had such a discussion. Nuclear missiles are the ultimate totalitarian technology. They absolutely defeat democratic institutions. Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper is far more critical of Israeli foreign policy than any corresponding paper in any country I've seen (with the exception of The Independent, UK). The Knesset is a vigorously democratic body. But in the end, the intelligence community quietly prevails.
For 25 years, India had a virtual "monopoly" of nuclear weapons; its only serious foe, Pakistan, had none between 1973 and 1998. Yet the 1998 demos did not seriously alter the security situation for India. The reason was that Pakistan's political elites, including the ISI, were essentially committed to the junker caste that dominates that country's land. Islamicism, as a hyper-conservative, anti-socialist movement, is totally pro-junker. The same is true for the conservative Arab Nationalist-cum-pietistic regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.
The main threat to Israel's security comes from a security apparatus that is increasingly behaving like an aluminum siding salesman, desperately dependent on a singe, very large, very lucrative customer for its services. It's gotten dumb and hysterical, and the objective reality of the Arab (or Iranian) powers is actually inconsequential.