Next Revolution: The Second American Revolution

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., June, 2007

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt are American supported dictatorships who have no democratic or Islamic legitimacy. Their Kingdoms are propped up by American political, military and economic support.

The opponents of these regimes have been labeled "terrorists," as have the opponents of Israel Occupation.

50 years of denying the democratic rights of colonized Arabs, especially the Palestinians, has caused Arabs to look towards religion, rather than secular Western "democracy," for political justice.

Our denial of democratic justice to the Middle-East has radicalized resistance by forcing insurgents to depart "democracy," and find justification for their resistance to Western Imperialism in religion. Our "democracy" has delivered nothing but dictators, invasions, occupations, and injustice by any standard.

Thus our military and political victories, as complete as they seem to us, have laid the groundwork for our ultimate failure. Our victory has repudiated our legitimacy, and empowered radical Islam to provide justice and legitimacy to replace our secular democratic injustices.

The ethical and moral void created when the West and its dictators denied political legitimacy, democracy, and self-determination to Arabs is now filled with radical Islam.

50 years of military domination and occupation has not forced the Palestinians to accept defeat. Instead, they brazenly deny Israeli victory, and willingly give up their lives in asymmetrical warfare against the overwhelming superiority of Israeli and American weapons.

An American Patriot once said he was sorry he had only one life to give, in pursuit of his country's freedom.

The Palestinians are, at their most destructive, no threat to Israel. The real threat the Palestinians pose to to the Israeli-American domination of the Middle-East is their refusal, at the cost of lives, liberties, and property, to accept Israel's "victory," over them, let alone accept the terms of victory the Israelis are dictating.

This bare rejection of Israeli legitimacy is a shining example of the triumph of the spirit of freedom and justice even when crushed under the treads of an American supplied Israeli tank.

Our response to this temerity is to declare the defeated, occupied residents of Palestine who refuse to accept Israeli victory, occupation, and domination "Terrorists."

This designation, according to Bush, puts the Palestinians beyond the pale of humanity, and the protections of international law. They may be kidnapped, tortured, and killed with extra-legal impunity.

The Ironic counterpoint to our "war on terror," is that to maintain the pretense of Israeli legitimacy in the Middle-East we fund and arm the Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian Dictatorships. These governments recognize no civil rights. They arbitrarily detain, torture, and kill their opponents.

Our state sponsored terror has stimulated individual "terror," which has triggered a flood tide of American state terror. Now we have a self-sustaining cycle of terror that is going to alter the political geography of the Middle-East.

Our Middle-Eastern Dictatorships repay our support by recognizing the legitimacy of Israel. They can only recognize Israel by holding their people in check at gunpoint.

Calling Islamic resistance to foreign dictators and foreign occupation "terrorism" is a thin effort win the war of words, and define away legitimate domestic political resistance to American backed dictators.

But as I pointed out above, Arabs are retreating from Western political and diplomatic forms, which have completely failed them, and are now basing the legitimacy of their insurgencies on Islam.

Winning the war of words is irrelevant when you have lost the war for the hearts and minds of the Middle-East.

The change in the terms of legitimacy in the Middle-East, from secular to Islamic, was spawned by our long term abuses of Palestine and our long term support of despotic regimes.

Iraq has merely released long pent up forces, instantly, and has accelerated the de colonization that was already changing the political landscape of the Middle-East.

Bush's definition of terrorism, combined with his attacks on Islamic nations, when coupled with our long term support of Arabic dictatorships, has created the conditions for a perfect storm of Islamic legitimacy to blow down our corrupted Middle-Eastern Empire.

This reversion to Islamic legitimacy has made American support for our dictatorships there as much a threat to their continuation in power, as our support is necessary for these dictators to continue in power.

These governments will instantly crumble in open elections, or if our military and economic support was withdrawn. They are presently under serious domestic pressure for accepting our support.

American supported dictatorships in the Middle-East have only one viable solution to this contradiction: radicalizing their positions to reflect their peoples' hatred of America. Only by putting themselves at the head of rising popular sentiment against American interference can our dictators hope to retain power.

Our dictators must do this to maintain what little moral authority they still have over their people, to postpone the day when they either pay for their disloyalty with their heads, go radically "native," or flee to the protection of the United States.

Bush has accelerated the process of Middle-Eastern de colonization by highlighting and inflaming Arabic rage against their American supported dictators by de legitimizing the Palestinians as "terrorists," and attempting to steal Iraq.

Our grasping for empire has hastened the inevitable fall, or radicalization of the Saudi, Jordanian, and Egyptian dictatorships. This will end the Arab peoples' forced recognition of Israel, and leave Israel in a considerably degraded negotiating position.

Israel's legitimacy cannot be honestly recognized in the Middle-East until the Arab peoples have rid themselves of their American dictatorships, and form legitimate governments that represent their beliefs, positions, and interests.

Only then will there be legitimate negotiating partners that represents the Arab's true perspective on Israel.

This has already happened in Iran and Syria. And it should come as no surprise that they hate and mistrust both Israel and the US.

Until we stop imposing dictators and policies on the Middle-East who serves our interests above local self-determination and self-rule, we will continue to be attacked by people who will go to great lengths to give up their lives to kill us.

We can strengthen and expand this hatred, by crushing the Arabs as they revolt against American dictatorships. This will fail, and when the Arabs finally defeat their American-Backed Dictators, and gain true independence and freedom from our empire, there will be hell to pay for both Israel and the US.

Or we can diminish the hatred. We have a choice with the parts of the Middle East we still control, Let's tell our Arab dictators that our reign of terror is over, and so is theirs.

We can demand free and fair elections under threat of taking away the military and political umbrella of protections that we shield our Egyptian, Saudi, Jordanian, and Pakistani dictators with.

It is obvious that rather than justice, we have chosen the path of greed and power. We have chosen to strengthen tyranny and increase violence to pursue wealth and power. This will fail, and it will fail in a bloodbath.

When failure occurs, the survivors, the rich Saudi Princes, and the minions of the Egyptian dictator, will move here, their true “homeland,” with billions of stolen dollars, just as the Cubans and Iranians have.

We can still avoid the bloody birth of an independent Middle-Eastern Enemy. Before us lays a critical choice. We can continue down the present path of supporting dictatorships and occupations which are accelerating the breakdown of our moral authority and legitimacy.

Our legitimacy, and the legitimacy of our various dictatorships, no longer extends beyond the range of our weapons.

Our other option is to radically shift direction by empowering Hamas as a legitimately elected representative of the Palestinians, and begin peace negotiations that respect their position. Our only requirement should be that they come to the negotiation table.

This would have to be accompanied by an refusal to fund or arm Israel unless they agreed to put the legitimacy of Israel up for negotiation with Hamas. We would also have to de fund, disarm, and demand that our Middle-Eastern Dictatorships immediately democratize. Our first demand must be that the region's armies have no role in domestic politics or security.

The price Israeli would pay for legitimacy in negotiations with Hamas would be substantial. But giving up East Jerusalem, Golan, the right of return, and linking the West Bank with Gaza would not just buy peace for Israel, but would de fang Islamic fundamentalism around the world.

If Israel fairly negotiates for its legitimacy with the Palestinians, rather than imposing itself through violence, the United States will no longer need to fund and support regional dictators to protect Israel. A deal between Hamas and Israel would defuse the vast majority of Islamic hatred for the Jews.

But even more importantly, an honestly negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestine would re legitimize the validity of western secular democracy and be more effective at deflating the expansion of radical Islam than any dictator or war on "terror" we ever could throw at them.

We've thrown vinegar on the Arabs for long enough. Let's try sugar.

Unfortunately, the state of American Politics makes it virtually impossible to rip our foreign policy out of the grip of Big Oil and the Israeli Lobby. The only way to stop our government from supporting tyranny around the world is to take it back from the corporate fascists who have captured our parties, elections, and the government itself. A tall order indeed.

The problem is deeper than party or political belief. Our democratic system itself has been hijacked by wealth and power. Our government fights for wealth and power around the world because these forces have captured our democracy here.

The fact is that we are no longer a democracy, independent of which party controls which branch of government. Both parties are tools of wealth and power, and use our foreign policy as a weapon of empire to expand the profit and power of their corporate masters.

Look for the US to attempt to bomb Iran into the Stone Age, triggering a massive regional war, if not an eventual global conflict.

At the very least our policies of violence and greed will midwife the bloody emergence of an independent, post-colonial Middle-East, and will formalize a new world balance of power that will feature China, Russia and India rising to fill the power vacuum our moral and military blunders are creating. American control of the world oil markets is ending.

For the Middle-East this will involve changing the definition of "terrorism" from applying it to those who oppose tyranny, to those who impose tyranny.

That's us.