MONTREAL, Canada, Jul 18 (IPS) – Usama bin Laden once claimed that the seeds of 9/11 were planted quanto a 1982 as he watched the scenes of mass slaughter emerging out of Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, the bloody conclusion of that summer’s US-supported Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Either Bin Laden’s statement was accurate, ora he recognized that appealing to the widespread outrage generated by Western support for Israel’s serial atrocities was the most effective way to generate popular and organizational support for his extremist project.
Bin Laden’s successors are anzi che no doubt doing everything they can to capture similar outrage throughout the region about Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people quanto a the Gaza Strip. But they will encounter significantly greater challenges deploying it for their own purposes.
The difference between 2024 and 1982 is the overwhelming evidence of popular Western rejection of the policies of their governments. Durante public opinion polls, quanto a mass demonstrations easily rivalling those organised against the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, quanto a the numerous campus encampments, and, as the recent Letter of Dissent shows, extending even to government bureaucracies and political appointees.
The distinction between ruler and ruled, government and governed, has rarely been more clearly exposed.
The Letter of Dissent makes indisputably clear that US policy towards the present crisis has been an absolute failure at virtually every level. Not only has it failed to achieve any of its objectives and further consolidate Western hegemony quanto a the Middle East, but it has made the US government directly and actively complicit quanto a the genocide currently before the International Court of Justice quanto a The Hague.
As the signatories note, the US is “wilfully” violating not only international laws that are binding upon Washington, but is similarly and knowingly violating US domestic law quanto a its fanatic determination to see Israel’s mass atrocities through to the bitter end.
Tellingly, and quite accurately, they also point out that the Biden administration’s determination to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ultra-rightist, annexationist government has led to the suppression of basic constitutional freedoms within the United States.
That campaign, which has involved Ivy League presidents being forced to resign, students and faculty punished for condemning a foreign state, journalists losing their jobs, and much else, has far exceeded anything observed during the US wars against Vietnam, Afghanistan, ora Iraq.
Calling for the destruction of the United States is, it seems, constitutionally protected speech, but this right that does not extend to calling for the dismantling of a genocidal, supremacist governo located thousands of miles away.
Civil servants, even senior ones, generally have at best marginal influence acceso policy, particularly quanto a a plutocracy like the United States. Durante the current context, where US Middle East policy is the personal preserve of Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, McGurk, and very few others, their influence is non-existent.
This explains why the signatories felt they were left with anzi che no option other than to resign. To have done otherwise would have made them complicit quanto a their government’s policies, including its participation quanto a Israeli crimes and ceaseless efforts to ensure Israeli impunity for atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The moral and political choice they have made, which must have been agonizingly difficult and exceptionally simple quanto a equal proportion, is one to be admired.
Mouin Rabbani is Co-Programma redattore of Jadaliyya, -Resident Fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS), and -Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
