The story of Haditha is finally emerging in its ghastly entirety, just the kind of tale this sort of conflict inevitably produces. A war of hostile occupation, fueled by a generalized distaste and even hatred of the people being occupied; a war with no discernible strategy or end point, in which soldiers are sent on patrol after pointless deadly patrol until their hopelessness and anger tears them apart from within. This is a brutal act, but it’s enormously easy for someone like me to sit safe at home and moralize — if I were there on patrol, I don’t know what the fuck I’d be doing, and let’s face it, neither would you. We are all responsible for this crime, because we have been unwilling to restrain our government from committing the larger crime of invading Iraq and compounding that crime with the evils that have proceeded from the occupation. I say “unwilling” because we are free to make our voices heard. If we demanded an end to this war, it would be over. 

One of our biggest problems as a society, in my opinion, is that we let ourselves off the hook too easily. It’s part and parcel of the prevailing trend in modern American politics — separate the voters from the costs of major policy decisions and you will gain their tacit support. This is especially true of anything involving our all-volunteer military. For the first time ever (I believe), our forces have been deployed in a major conflict for an extended period of time without the support of a national mobilization. In essence, the money to fund the deployment is entirely borrowed — another first. We are just barely aware that there’s a war going on, and yet the administration, members of Congress, and political pundits intone Churchillian rhetoric about the long struggle ahead, etc., etc., as if to sell the American public on a flattering image of itself as a defiant, heroic people facing incredible odds (like Britain during the blitz) without the inconvenience of, well, any actual sacrifice… unless you are among the unlucky minority with family members in the military. 

And when the inevitable happens — when it becomes clear that our soldiers are cracking under the stress of multiple tours of duty and shooting civilians like Cheney shoots caged quail — how do we react? Well, the military begins by blaming the messengers, calling the journalists who follow the stories traitors and dupes of al Qaeda, etc. After about 3 or 4 months of that, when they’re forced by mounting evidence to admit to some portion of the ugly truth, it becomes the individual soldiers’ fault. They then apply the dubious remedies of courts martial and sensitivity training slide shows, while the administration and its various flacks encourage us to look at the bigger picture (it took an endless war to get conservatives talking about “context”). But there’s one thing Bush’s cousin Tony Snow won’t tell us at the daily briefing — we are more responsible for those deaths than the soldiers who pull the trigger. This is the result of a criminal foreign policy, and because we enjoy the unparalleled freedoms of American democracy, we must also accept the responsibility for what our elected officials get us into. 

Our soldiers have very few options. We have many. If we don’t want them to kill, we should bring them the fuck home. Now.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pressed the flesh with Dubya this week, collecting his vaguely qualified endorsement of the unilateral “disengagement” plan that would complete the project of dispossession forced upon the Palestinians for the past 39 years. The plan, originally proposed by Sharon, seeks to redraw the borders of Israel to encompass major settlement blocks in the West Bank and virtually all of East Jerusalem, while securing the Jordan valley and dividing the Palestinian population into isolated cantons, cut off from one another and from Jerusalem, their cultural, political, and economic hub. It officially throws all relevant UN resolutions out the window from 242 forward, allowing Israel to claim land it seized in the 1967 war — land that is clearly not part of the State of Israel, illegally occupied by the IDF since that time. Bush’s reservation about the disengagement plan is really just a diplomatic chimera — he would like to see the same result achieved with some level of participation by the Palestinians. What they term being a “partner in peace” is really just taking part in your own oppression. 

There’s no question but that the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is illegal, and that any Israeli settlements built within those areas violate international law, aside from being so plainly unjust that any 5-year-old could see it. And yet it continues, with the support of our government and both major political parties. And like any occupying power since Roman times, the Israeli government has attempted to replace direct rule of the territories with some form of proxy rule, via compliant (and bribe-friendly) local agents. During the years prior to the first intifada, Tel Aviv tried to accomplish this by imposing collaborationist Palestinians as local officials, mayors, etc., while working to undermine the influence of the PLO. In fact, Israeli intelligence had a hand in getting Hamas established as a component of this divide-and-rule strategy. The Palestinian uprising in 1987-91 demonstrated to Israel that, even with a severely marginalized PLO, Palestinian nationalism could not be countered through the use of individual quislings. Then came Oslo. 

Indeed, the brilliance of the Oslo Accords was that they co-opted Arafat and the PLO as that long sought-after colonial administration, in the form of the Palestinian Authority. The PA was charged with handling security (Israeli security) while the development of Israel’s colonial infrastructure in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and (to a lesser extent) Gaza continued at a steady pace. In return, the PA would distribute all aid and tax moneys (minus graft) and Arafat could call himself “president”. This gave us the spectacle of his overfed lieutenants living opulently amongst the unspeakable squalor that was Palestinian society, while the superimposition of the Israeli settlement infrastructure continued unabated by this sham peace accord, through both Labor and Likud administrations. Though virtually unknown to the American public (which has underwritten much of this construction), Israel’s project in East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been an inescapable reality for Palestinians, its trajectory very clearly discernable. They see the Fatah-dominated PA as an accomplice in this, at worst, or as an institution too ineffective and self-serving to stop the land grab, at best. Recall, too, that Abbas (Abu Mazen) was chosen by Sharon, and that more popular Fatah figures were kept from competing (some by remaining in Israeli jails). That’s largely why Hamas won the legislative elections — because they are obviously not in the pocket of Israel.

One thing hasn’t changed: there can be no peace without justice. We ignore this fact at our own peril.