This essay was first published in the Palestine Chronicles 2005 05 09 .

As of this writing, George Bush and his entourage, including Condaleeza Rice are touring Eastern Europe as part of the European celebrations of V-E day, and along the way, the fall of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union. Also along the way they are extolling the virtues of “freedom” and “democracy” as represented by the American ideal, without recognizing the absurdity of their rhetoric and historical perspective, with Bush continually espousing democracy as a branch of the military, “There is no power like the power of freedom and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights for that freedom.”[1] A day earlier in Riga he said, “When powerful governments negotiated the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable.”[2] Rice has added, “Quite clearly the fall of the Soviet Union has led to some very good things including democracies throughout Eastern Europe and Central Europe and free Baltic states.”[3]

Certainly freedom and democracy are idealistic situations, but all the wonderful rhetoric juxtaposed against the United States’ own actions around the globe reduce these comments to the level of absurdity, as William Blum says in his latest book Freeing the World to Death, “This listing…of myths, lies, and half truths…could serve to provoke laughter at the absurdity of it all if not for the extensive pain and suffering and ruined lives the crusade [in this case, against communism] gave birth to.”[4] The same words apply to the current crusade, as per Bush himself, against the terrorists.

A global review shows Afghanistan under occupation, at least the area around Kabul, with millions of CIA dollars being spent to buy off many of the warlords in the outlying regions. Iraq is currently occupied, with the formation of a government that may or may not turn out to be a puppet of the U.S. but either way will have to deal with a large American Embassy replete with CIA personnel, upwards of fourteen military bases, a renewed secret service, from former members of the mukhabarat, and an army and police force with unknown tribal or regional loyalties. All this comes at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, and the freedom that is waiting is the freedom to have Western companies own the resources and extract their profits and utility. Many of the new republics around the Middle East now have American military bases along with the obvious CIA and special services operatives to assist with ‘democracy’. Along with that are several “non-governmental” agencies, the leaders being the National Endowment for Democracy, the Agency for International Development, and George Soros’ Open Society organizations.

Pakistan, hardly a bastion of freedom and democracy, is a military dictatorship, currently in strong favour with the Bush administration, and Mushareef walks a fine balancing act between his own internal dissension and his external mix of politics. After Bush's recent handholding walk with the Saudi leader, any recent spats with Saudi Arabia are at least publicly over as the U.S. aims to secure its supply of oil over the freedom and democracy of the Arab people.

In all these cases, there have been soldiers fighting for their freedom, but there have also been soldiers fighting for occupation and control. One area where the U.S., at least superficially, does not appear to be militarily or subversively involved with is the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It does not have to be, as the Israelis, with tacit and complicit support of the Americans, through foreign aid to the tune of three billion dollars or more a year, through exchanges of military information and highly technical hardware, and through the denial of nuclear proliferation that has made Israel a destabilizing element in the Middle East, are doing it all for them. The goals that are being achieved are various: the support of a friendly hegemon in the area; the setting up of an irrationally conceived idea of a divine apocalypse; or more moderately conceived as the establishment of a homeland for the victims of the holocaust; the establishment of another region of controlled labour and controlled markets, “opened” up to “free enterprise”.

Through it all, the Palestinian people have shown an amazing resilience under the occupation of a power that could just as easily blow them all away in one go, but has chosen the more “democratically” acceptable version of chipping away at Palestine brick by brick, olive tree by olive tree. Given Bush’s current rhetoric, there is no power in Palestine as there is no freedom, yet there is at the moment a highly constrained latent power from those that are prepared to fight for that freedom. That constraint is remarkable under the circumstances – certainly no one wants continual death and destruction, but if one is on the receiving end of it, having one’s land and resources taken over piece by piece, through legal subterfuge, military control, and blatant defiance of international standards, then a deadly response may be the only option.

At the moment, at least by the current mainstream press reports, all is calm in Israel and the Palestinian remnants. Yet the euphemistic fence is still being built, settlements are still being built and augmented, Palestinian citizens are being killed and arrested for whatever excuse can be arranged by the Israeli occupation forces. And yet again, the Palestinians have shown that at least internally, they are a rational and democratic entity. They have recently had democratic elections in which both Hamas and Fatah have claimed parts of the popular vote. They have a democratically elected leader, whose success or failure cannot be measured in terms of democracy but in terms of the over-riding position of a supplicant in the courts of the powerful. If Palestine remains peaceful, they will probably face a situation of cantonization without any true authority over any of the areas that they would be allowed to live in. They would become workers and consumers of an all-embracing Israeli market at best. At worst they would become indentured servants living in third world conditions, living desperate lives under “freedom” and “democracy” American style.

While I consider myself a pacifist, and will always want to look for a negotiated settlement, and where I have never lived under any form of subjugation, especially military occupation for the purposes of colonization and settlement, I can perceive of a renewed Palestinian Intifada as a rational action under the circumstances. I do not advocate it, as it is not my position, literally, as I sit comfortably in a middle class first world home, to tell someone else to sacrifice their lives for freedom, and I do not know how I would truly react under similar circumstances in my homeland.

Still, the thought, the possible reality of the reaction remains rational, and as Michael Neumann from Trent University in Canada says, “There is another possible theory on why the Palestinians will keep attacking. It is that they are rational….The Palestinians' attacks may be the wrong response for all sorts of strategic reasons I don't pretend to know: no one can claim to know the effect of any Palestinian strategy on their ultimate future. But among all the uncertain strategies the Palestinians might adopt, continuing the attacks is certainly not stupid or suicidal, and therefore cannot be dismissed as fanaticism. Even if fanatics are behind the attacks, ordinary rational Palestinians would have good if not decisive reasons to adopt such a strategy.”[5]

There are certainly other strategies, but they require the cooperation and economic and political force from outside parties. Is it rational to expect all the settlements to be “unsettled”, and as reparations, simply handed over intact to the Palestinians? It would seem so to me. Is it rational to have the fence stopped and removed, to have the Israelis pull back to the Green Line of the 1967 war? Is it rational to have the Israelis disarmed under the context of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty that the Americans uphold strongly in the context of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, and ignore in the context of Pakistan, India, and Israel? Would it be rational for the U.S. to stop supporting Israel economically to the tune of three billions of dollars a year and create a true “free market” economy in the region; or conversely to support the Palestinians to the same amount, to restore an equilibrium to the region? Is economic and social support, combined with economic and political disincentives a better means of achieving goals than by sending in the soldiers? All would be rational outcomes to some truly rational thinking about the Palestinian problem – or more correctly, the Israeli problem.

Unfortunately, politics and consumptive oriented free markets are not in the realm of rational thought, other than as can be contrived by ignorance, rhetoric, advertising, and propaganda. I believe that George Bush fully believes in what he is saying, in his straightforward simplistic good guy – bad guy way of thinking. That does not mean that it is rational thinking, and the rhetoric of “freedom” and “democracy” that he uses are not intended to be universally applied, especially by himself and the United States military and economic forces. In the tragic farce that is American geopolitical rhetoric, Palestine, in Bush’s lexicon, is expendable.

[1] “Bush prepares to meet with Putin”, Jennifer Kloven, AP, 2005 05 08

[2] “Baltics betrayed by transfer to Soviet control”, CNN, 2005 05 07

[3] Loven, ibid

[4] Blum, William, Freeing the World to Death – essays on the american empire. Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine. 2005.

[5] Neumann, Michael. “A Shrinking Pie in the Sky – Strategies in Palestine.” Counterpunch. February 21, 2005.