As Dangerous As It Gets

Where can a reader get up-to-date news and be well-informed to make specialized assessments about what is happening in the world today? Especially when, just one day after the U.S. announced new plans to expand secret military actions in the Middle East and to abandon the term “War on Terror,” The New York Times publishes a piece such as Thomas Friedman’s “As Ugly as it Gets” (May 25, 2010).

To gather intelligence and build ties with local forces, the U.S. Defense Department and the CIA were granted absolute freedom to use the help of retired Blackwater contractors in both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti, on May 24, said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

In his piece, Friedman [citing Moisés Naím, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine] accused President Lula of raising great moral frustration because of his support for thwarting democracy across Latin America; and classified Iran, Venezuela, Brazil and Turkey as being “not [quite] democracies,” while neglecting to call some “allied” and “friendly” countries “ugly,” although they are as far from democracy as Earth is from Mars.

It seems that this new strategy has not stopped making use of offending revolutionary colors. The Iranian “green revolution” is in the style of the “orange revolution” that broke out in Ukraine and was dispelled thanks to the power of a democracy that cannot be compatible with a so-called “democracy,” one remotely controlled by those who know nothing about the spirituality of our societies, the vitality of our values and the patriotism of our people. They live far away in their safe havens, thousands of miles from the places where they inflict anxiety and turmoil, apply charges and convictions, and beget mutual conflicts, death and destruction.

How can remote-control “democracy” operators be aware of the death and destruction taking place in Iraq; the ongoing killings in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia; the daily crimes committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians; the air bombings of the inhabitants of Gaza; and the daily violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli planes?

The objective of the new U.S. policy is to deepen Israel’s roots in the Middle East, to fully “integrate” it into the region and “to ensure its security” at the expense of the Arabs’ security and rights. All this, without regard to war crimes committed against the indigenous population, without regard to the shameful torture practices of sadist settlers against prisoners (including children and mothers locked in Israeli jails, as reported by Israeli press and human rights organizations) and, above all, without regard to Israeli apartheid policies, such as those referred to in the book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa,” by Sasha Polakow-Suransky.

This book recounts Israel’s attempt to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa and the scandal that followed. The most important and serious chapter in the book discloses the most cruel and humiliating racism ever directed against Arabs and Palestinians.

Thomas Friedman has no concrete information about the nuclear warheads Israel has been planning to sell to the South African regime since the ’70s. Meanwhile, though, he sheds light on a mysterious term when he writes, “Experts say it would only take months for Iran to again amass sufficient quantity for a nuclear weapon.” Despite the fact that Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium does not exceed 20 percent, when a nuclear weapon requires uranium to be enriched to 90 percent, and despite the fact that Iran is one of the signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while Israel is not, Thomas Friedman still believes Iran poses a more significant nuclear threat than Israel.

In other words, for the author, as it has always been for the U.S. and the European community, Israel’s nuclear weapons are safe and do not pose a threat to the millions of Arabs in the region. These Arabs simply do not exist for them.

“The world would be much safer without more nukes, especially in the Middle East,” says Thomas Friedman, referring to Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb. But what about the nuclear warheads possessed by Israel? What about the huge arsenal of all kinds of lethal weapons used daily in killing, displacing and annihilating Palestinian civilians, including unarmed women and children?

Concluding his article, Thomas Friedman warns, “Anyone who enables this tyrannical regime and gives cover for its nuclear mischief will one day have to answer to the Iranian people.” Who, then, will answer the questions of the Palestinians, the Iraqis and the Afghan people about the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Israel, the Judaizing of Arab neighborhoods, the burning of mosques, the demolition of homes, the razing of agricultural lands, the deprivation of Arabs’ rights to political expression, their aspirations to nationhood, and the denial of freedom and a national state?

All these crimes were authorized by new and old American strategies to ensure Israel’s security. These are strategies that embrace “ugly” dictatorship and call it a friend as long as it contributes to the well-being of the state of Israel. They turn a democracy that supports the Palestinians’ right to freedom into an ugly democracy. The way these American strategies will work is that if the so-called “ugly” states of Iran, Turkey, Brazil and Venezuela stand on the side of Israel and support it against the unarmed Palestinian people, the next day they will officially be declared “friends” and “allies.” The West’s criterion for a “democracy” in the Middle East becomes very clear: the “security of Israel.”

The declaration of classified military activity, agreed upon between the Pentagon and the CIA in the Middle East and the surrounding area, warns of a new era of anarchy more dangerous than the war on terror because this stage aims to reshape our world and our countries — even our culture and our morals — according to a group of contractors who follow a totally different agenda, without any regard for indigenous people or even their values, culture and ethics. The world is divided again into “those with us and those against us,” but with efforts to recruit some local indigenous populations to launch the “orange revolution” and the “green revolution” under the guise of legitimacy. It seems that we are heading toward a more dangerous future, so it is not good for anybody that Friedman, and people like him, are the ones to promote such a future. This promotion would be misleading and dangerous.