the Achilles heel of US imperial power - because the socalled Vietnam syndrome has not been bypassed, as Bush senior lnougnt wnen ne launched his attack on Iraq in 1991.
On the contrary - this socalled Vietnam syndrome is very much with us, and this is a very important legacy. which weakens very much the ability of the United States empire to impose its will on the rest of the world.
So that's where they have this major problem. They are not able to control Iraq, even the Arab Sunni areas of Iraq, that is 20% or less than 20% of the Iraqi population. This is a real disaster for the image of the United States empire.
One major aspect of the confrontation between Washington and Tehran is about winning the hearts and minds of the Arab Sunnis. The overwhelming majority of Arabs belong to the Sunni branch of Islam, not to the Shiites, which is dominant in Iran and is a majority in Irag.
Washington, in the recent period, have been very much playing the Sunni card trying to incite the Sunnis against the Shites. The dangerous slide toward a This is a civil war in Iraq is one that the United States has real been fueling for a whole period. turned the whole the image sebanon thing upside You had of the down. already had the victory of Hamas, United
was major blow for States the United States and its 1 rab empire. clients - all the more that Hamas Is the most prestigious Sunni Islamic fundamentalist orcanizallon in alliance with Tehran.
And now you have the situation wnere all attempls by Washington's Arab clients to take a stand condemning Hezbollah have backfired, and there is a sweeping wave of public opinion in all Arab Countries overwhelmingly sympathising with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is an organization which came to embody the Lebanese national resistance to Israeli occupation. It was born in the aftermath of in 1982.
And that was a kind of conjunction between the shockwave The Iranian revolution in 1979, and the effect of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, especially on the Lebanese Shiites - the overwhelming majority of the population OI southern Lebanon, the Pall of Lebanon that naturally was invaded for the longer time by Israel.
Hezbollah is an organization with popular roots that has members in Parliament and two ministers in the Lebanese government there's no standard by which this could be considered a terrorist organization.
hezbollan resounas as an organization, as you can see right now on the TV screens. People have suffered all that they have suffered, and -instead of turning against Hezbollah, as Israel wanted them or thought that they would - Hezbollah has won a much wider popularity than it had before this war.
Any force, which fights through guerilla struggle, is labeled a terrorist by the occupying power, in this case by Israel.
They are called 'terrorist' by the godfather of the occupying power, by the United •Lates. and considered an enemy because thev are close
allies of Syria and Iran, states that are considered Washington major enemies of disaster for us designs in the
area. Suzi Weissman: What's going to happen now in Lebanon? Gilbert Achcar: I think that now the stratagem for Washington is to try to foster divisions between the Lebanese - which they couldn't achieve as long as the war was going on. Now that the war has stopped they will try to push that forward.
They
wall CLO Cucale dynamics which would be as dangerous as the ones in Iraq, because ine possibility or a civ1 war looms on the horizon in Lebanon.
This is a country, after all, which overcame its own civil war only 15 yrs ago, or 16 veals ah.
Washington would want to combine of a split in the Lebanese society, and acting through the force that is going to be sent to Lebanon, to increase its interference and to try to acneve war side was nol able to achieve by its military onslaught. Campbell MacGregor
In July a group of activists from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign visited the West Bank. We traveled to Jenin in the north of the West Bank, where there is 75 per cent unemployment and 40 per cent of the population are below the poverty line.
We met Ismail, the father of Ahmad, an 11-year-old boy who in a well-publicised case was shot by Israeli soldiers. His father agreed that his organs could be donated to other children - they went to two Arabs and four Jews.
We visited the Martyr Doctor Khalil Suleiman Hospital, named after a doctor who died in an Israeli missile attack on an ambulance in 2002. In the director's office we saw bullet holes in the ceiling, from an Israeli incursion
The hospital has only one ambulance. It takes about ten hours to transfer a patient to Jerusalem because they are not allowed onto settler roads, and they have to transfer between ambulances at the edge of Jerusalem. Many women end up giving birth while held up at checkpoints.
We spent some time in villages near Jenin. We visited Zababdeh, a 70 per cent Christian village, and met the council, which consists of 6 Christians and 3 Muslims. By law the mayor has to be a Christian.
The different communities are working together, and they rejected stories in the US Congress that the election of Hamas was a threat to Christians. What Palestinian Christians see threatening them is the Israeli occupation. Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) members have was persuaded to drop Israeli sponsorship. cricket championship. the SPSC.
The financial situation was desperate because international aid was been cut off after the election. Bills were mounting up and they did not know where they would be in a few months. We also visited the villages of Taybeh and Rumane very near the Israeli "security continued their struggle for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions since they came home. The Edinburgh International Film Festival
In early August an Israeli cricket team was run out of Glasgow. They were planning to hold three matches with the Israeli team at different venues in the west of Scotland, as part of the European
The first two were moved to the most secure ground they could find in Glasgow, where they took place with a strong police presence, and the third was moved to Lossiemouth air force base. The protests were mainly organised by Stop the War but supported by fence". From some points you can see the outskirts of the Israeli Arab town of Umm alFahm on the other side of the wall. Before the wall was built people in these villages would cross the border regularly to go to work or visit relatives in Umm al-Fahm. Now they are unable to work in Israel and if they want to visit they have to go all the way round by Jerusalem.
We spent a few days in Nablus, and visited the AlNajah University. Over the past five years 52 students have been killed and hundreds arrested. Some Palestinians study abroad, but they sometimes have to sign declarations that they are leaving for 2, 3, or 4 years.
We met the Greek Orthodox priest in Nablus in his church. In 2002 over 60 per cent of the church was destroyed in an Israeli incursion, and it was badly damaged again in 2004. He said the Christians are part of the Palestinian people, not a minority but normal citizens.
We met the Roman Catholic (Melekhite) priest in Nablus. He was born in Haifa in 1940, and showed us his birth certificate issued by the British authorities. Now he is unable to go there, and even has difficulty visiting the Christian holy places in Jerusalem. We also met some other survivors of the Nakba.
We tried to visit the Samaritans in their village near Nablus, but were stopped by Israeli Druze soldiers and another soldier with a London accent. Heading back to Jerusalem, it took over an hour to get across the Howarrah checkpoint south of Nablus. This is the sort of thing Palestinians have to put up with all the time. There have recently been a number of attacks on Scottish activists in Palestine. On August 1, during a peaceful protest in Jerusalem, Gordon Clubb, vice-chair of the SPSC, and three others were arrested and then badly beaten. One of them was passing blood afterwards.
There have also been serious attacks on internationals taking part in protests on August 11 in Bil'in, a farming village in where most of the land is cut off by the Israeli wall.
Two Scottish activists were seriously injured, a Danish woman may have been left paralysed after being beat about the head, and a German man may have brain damage after being hit by a rubber bullet.
Attacks like this against Palestinians are nothing exceptional, but there appears to be a pattern of increasing attacks on internationals, not just isolated incidents, presumably aimed at discouraging them from entering the West Bank.
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hoping to gain an edge over their allies to power. against 'our' imperialists in There is no third camp com-