Bollettino

There's a mass illusion in the Lefty world that the Middle East bleeds for the Palestinians. We really don't think there's any evidence for this. Sure, there is some encouragement of those Palestinians who volunteer to make firecrackers of themselves, and there is much high flying rhetoric, but for the fifty some years of the diaspora there hasn't been any evidence that the Palestinian cause takes precedent over self interest. There is, in other words, a divergence between the symbolism of the cause and the realities of national interest.

We are moved to make these observations by the coverage of Arab disappointment with the end (or at least an image of that final horror) of the Saddam the Meatgrinder regime. If we were Pentagon imperialists, we would certainly encourage the juxtaposition of the reactions of Iraqis and the "Arab street." There is no better foothold for a divide and rule strategy. We can understand the pride in the resistance of the fedayeen, which is of a much more uncertain composition than the Republican guard, and can be plausibly made out to represent a form of feeling not bound up with Saddam's infra-infernalstructure. But for the Republican guard we can only feel what Trotsky felt about the Czar's police force: the military, he said, was salvagable, but as for the police, the only way to salvage them was at the end of a rope thrown around the nearest lamppost.

So -- this is a long winded way of saying we don't put a lot of stock in the idea that Smilin' Jay Garner's relationship with Israel has much bearing on his coming rule in Iraq. There's something rather miserable in rooting for popular antisemitic attitudes to kick in, anyway. No, what will, if not warded off by international pressure, spark the second phase of the war is the simple combination of Iraqi disgruntlement with occupation and the inevitable struggles between factions. As we said in some long lost post, the goal of the anti-occupation movement ought to be: 1. prevent the looting of Iraq by Americans; 2. prevent the deterioration of the civil society that has emerged in Northern Iraq; 3. support the immediate rule of Iraq by Iraqis; 4. enourage the accelerated pullout of Amerian and British troops.