Why the cost of ‘war’ in the Middle East will also be paid by you

Beware of hubris or over-weaning pride. It can be fatal. That’s a warning which should be heeded by the United States of America, now that it’s flexing its muscles as the world’s only remaining superpower.

There was a time when Greece was in glory, and the Athenian, Spartan and Theban forces contended only with each other, as city-state fought city-state for supremacy. They are all gone. Alexander the Great destroyed the other superpower of his time, Persia, then established a Hellenic empire that stretched all the way to India. He and his Macedonian vanguard are all dust. The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once overran Europe. The Grand Armée and Imperial Eagles of that "Child of Destiny" were crushed at Waterloo by a coalition of enemies led by England’s "Iron Duke", the Duke of Wellington, who remarked dourly of his own men: "(Our army) is composed of the scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth!"

Where have the Spanish Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Nazi German Third Reich, Daitoa and the Empire of Japan, and, for that matter, the British Empire and the Soviet Empire gone? Gone with the wind (with apologies to Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara).

Superpowers, alas, always find a way of committing suicide. And what leads them to perdition is imperial hubris.

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I was reminded of this yesterday when I spotted a four-column frontpage story in the International Herald Tribune (Tuesday, April 2), reprinted from The New York Times. The disquieting piece, by Emily Eakin, was headlined: ’It takes an empire,’ say several US thinkers.

The analytical article says: "Today, America is no mere superpower or hegemon but a full-blown empire in the Roman and British sense. That, at any rate, is the consensus of some of the most notable US commentators and scholars.

" ‘People are now coming out of the closet on the word ‘empire’," said the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. ‘The fact is no country has been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of the world since the Roman Empire.’

"Americans are used to being told – typically by resentful foreigners – that they are imperialists. But lately some of the nation’s own eminent thinkers are embracing the idea. More astonishing, they are using the term with approval. From the isolationist right to the imperialist-bashing left, a growing number of experts are issuing stirring paeans to American empire."

The writer points out that it is the view of Max Boot, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial features editor, that "the Sept. 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation."

This guy Boot must think America’s on a roll, on some wild joy-ride to supremacy, since he calls for the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, citing the "stabilizing effect of 19th-century British rule in the region." Boot enthused that "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodphurs and pith helmets." (He forgets the Brits and the Soviets got clobbered in Afghanistan.)

"Since then," Eakin asserts, "the empire idea has caught on. In January, Charles Fairbanks, a foreign policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, told an audience at Michigan State University that America was ‘an empire in the making.’ Last month, a Yale University professor, Paul Kennedy – who 10 years ago was predicting America’s ruin from imperial overreach – went further."

What’s Kennedy saying now? He wrote in the Financial Times of London: "The Pax Britannica was run on the cheap. Britain’s army was much smaller than European armies and even the Royal Navy was equal only to the next two navies – right now all the other navies in the world combined could not dent American maritime supremacy. Napoleon’s France and Philip II’s Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar system. Charlemagne’s empire was merely western European in its stretch. The Roman Empire stretched further afield, but there was another great empire in Persia and a larger one in China. There is no comparison."

Gee whiz, Paul K. Whatever happened to you? Perhaps it’s the effect of too much boola-boola in Yale or too many renderings of the Whippenprof song.

As for Professor Fairbanks from my alma mater, the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins, he at least said that the American empire was still "in the making". Get that half-baked shoo-fly pie out of the oven, fellows. That empire bit is a half-cocked idea and can only be described by a phrase used in the title of one of the perceptive historian Barbara Tuchman’s books: The march of folly.

Stick to making Hollywood movies, Coca-Cola, Burger King, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Kenny Rogers Chicken, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Wrigley’s chewing gum, Yanquis. That’s what you do best – and, truly, for all the ribbing you get, your culture, music, and even homespun humor gladden the world. But imperial dreams and ambitions? Sanamagan. Get real!

An American who was as wise in political and pragmatism as he was foolish and wayward in love, once said it well: "A democracy is peaceloving. It does not like to go to war. It is slow to rise to provocation. When it has once been provoked to the point where it must grasp the sword, it does not easily forgive its adversary for having produced the situation. The fact of provocation then becomes itself the issue. Democracy fights in anger – it fights for the very reason that it was forced to go to war."

That, I’d like to believe, is how real Americans feel today, aside from the few who are intoxicated quite obviously by visions of "imperial" glory of the shopworn Victorian model. The man who said those words above was a youthful Massachusetts Senator named John F. Kennedy. They are contained in his book, Profiles in Courage (1955).

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If we think the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians is too far away – "a world away", as the phrase goes – to affect us, we’d better think again. As an offshoot of the mid-East crisis, the price per barrel of crude oil on the world market has shot up in the past few days.

In retaliation for the massive Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) offensive on Ramallah, Bethlehem, and other Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank, and "hits" on Gaza, Iran has threatened to cut off its supply of oil to the West.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, says it will "compensate" by increasing production and sales.

And let’s not forget: There’s still Russia, who may intervene in favor of the US and the West by pumping out more oil from its vast reserves to offer a supply in case there’s a boycott of America and the West on the part of Arab oil-producing states unless the US and its allies force the Israelis to stop. (Once America’s foes and sponsors of Arab terrorism themselves, the Russians – badgered by Muslim guerrilla attacks in Chechnya – are now "allies" in the war on "terrorism".)

Nonetheless, the reality of the Middle East in ferment has sent oil prices soaring to their highest mark in six months. Let’s brace ourselves. In this country, gasoline, oil and fuel prices are already high. The "war" in Israel and Palestine may push them even higher. In short, we’ll also be paying the price of the escalation of that conflict at our corner gas pump.

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The awful thing about the battles being waged between Israelis and Palestinians is that both are in the wrong and in the right at the same time. There have been double-crosses and betrayals on both sides. I’m afraid that by now there is no prospect of "peace".

Yesterday, TIME Magazine’s new issue (April 8) came off the press, depicting a haggard-looking Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat over the grim cover title: "All Boxed in."

It’s true enough that Arafat is now bottled up by IDF troops and tanks in a two-room office in his battered Ramallah compound, but the Israelis, by their military actions have "boxed" themselves in, too. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his government, and his forces have left themselves no room to maneuver on the political and diplomatic front. And, as everybody knows, tanks, armored cards, F-16 jets, Apache helicopter gunships, and gunboats cannot stop the "suicide bombers." (Now, even young Palestinian women are getting into the act.)

Whatever his shortcomings, faults or weaknesses – possibly, even his treachery – Yasser Arafat (contrary to Israel’s claims that he is "irrelevant") is the only game in town. I think the Israelis should not only let Arafat go; they must escort him to safety elsewhere. But where? Nobody’s sure, of course. Nowhere is "safe", whether in the West Bank, Gaza, or inside Israel itself. That’s what exists on the ground in that weary, hatred-wracked, postage stamp of a war zone that looms so huge in the emotions and perceptions of much of mankind today. When there’s an unholy war raging in the Holy Land, everything gets magnified a hundred times.

As for the Israelis, they fight in frustration, for there’s nothing they can do. They can win battles, but they can’t militarily win the war. Their IDF can mobilize half a million men (and women) within hours and defy, even defeat the most formidable military forces of thei r nearest Arab neighbors, Egypt, Syria and even Jordan in a conventional war (they have the most powerful army, armored corps, navy and air force), but they simply get nibbled away by hit-and-run snipers and suicide-bombing "martyrs" of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade belonging to Arafat’s Fatah, the radical Hamas,  and the Islamic Jihad. And, mind you, the Hezbollah – the Iranian-backed jihadis in Lebanon – are still warming up for their next assaults.

It’s important for the Israelis to keep Arafat alive. If he were to be killed by accident or by mistake, there could be no turning back for anyone – the Jews, the Palestinians, and the Arab states. He may be a failure, but it can be said, as a king of France once bragged: Après moi, le deluge. For the next set of leaders can only be more radical, more fanatical, and more troublesome than Arafat.

When this writer was last in Israel in March, 1996, there were already many suicide-bombings – of shopping plazas, of buses, and of cafes and eateries. My wife and I made a pilgrimage to the parking lot behind Tel Aviv’s Kikar Maichel Yisrael (by then renamed Kikar Rabin) where a youthful Israeli zealot had shot Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to death for the "crime" of advocating peace with the Palestinians and the Arabs.

Rabin had been walking to his car after a peace rally when 25-year old Yigal Amir slid into position behind him and shot him three times with a Beretta. There was a small improvised shrine on the sidewalk where Rabin died, on which a few candles burned, held upright over cans of "remembrance". On a nearby wall were scribbled expressions of grief from visitors and sympathizers. We said our own little prayer for Rabin.

Then we motored over to Dizengoff street where a suicide bomber had exploded himself, killing more than a dozen passers-by and wounding 75 others seriously. The Palestinian terrorist had bribed an Israeli truck driver to smuggle him into the city allegedly "to find a job", but had packed himself with explosives and shattered one of the main shopping areas at the height of the Purim early evening rush.

In the same month, we saw on television how Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir, reacted when he was convicted by the Tel Aviv District court and meted out a "life sentence". I wrote at the time: "It’s pathetic that the verdict didn’t even manage to wipe the insolent smile off his (Amir’s) face."

Rabin’s murder signified, I also wrote then, "the end of the peace process." I’m genuinely sorry to find that dire prediction turning out to be correct.