The Neo Conservatives and the Policies of Constructive Chaos

During her press briefing at the State Department, on July 21st 2006, Condoleezza Rice was questioned on the initiatives she intended to take to bring peace back to Lebanon. « I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante”, she responded. “I think it would be a mistake. What we’re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing — the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one.». [1]

Seen from Washington, what is happening today in Lebanon has no relation whatsoever with the recovering of soldiers captured by the Hezbollah. What is at stake is the carrying out of the long nurtured theory of « constructive chaos ». According to the adepts of philosopher Leo Strauss, whose media branch is better known under the name of « neo-conservatives », real power cannot be exerted from if one remains in the status quo, but only, quite the contrary, in the act of destroying all forms of resistance. It is by plunging the masses into chaos that the elites can aspire to ensure the stability of their position.

Léo Strauss

Also, according to the adepts of Leo Strauss, it is only in this violence that the imperial interests of the United States merge with those of the Jewish State.

The Israeli will to dismantle Lebanon, to create in its place a mini-Christian state and annex part of its territory, is not new. It was enunciated in 1957 by David Ben Gourion in a famous letter published as an annex to his posthumous memoirs. [2] Particularly, it was inserted into a vast colonization project of the Middle East written in 1996 under the title: A clean break: a new strategy to secure the Kingdom (of Israel) [3] That document, written up in a neo conservative think tank, the IASPS, was prepared by a group of experts assembled by Richard Perle et given to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is representative of the thinking of the revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky [4]. It called for:

 the canceling of the Oslo peace agreements
 the elimination of Yasser Arafat
 the annexation of the Palestinian territories,
 the overthrow of Sadam Hussein to destabilize, Syria and Lebanon in a chain of events
 the dismantling of Iraq and the creation of a Palestinian state in its territory
 the utilization of Israel as a complementary base for the US Star Wars program

That document inspired the speech given the next day by Benjamin Netanyahu to the US Congress. [5] All ingredients of the present situation are included there: threats against Iran, Syria and the Hezbollah, with the included demand for annexation of East Jerusalem.

That viewpoint concurs with that of the United States administration. The control of areas rich in hydrocarbons defined by Zginiew Brzezinski and Bernard Lewis as the “arc of crisis”, ie. the arc reaching from the Gulf of Guinea to the Caspian sea going through the Persian Gulf, demands a redefinition of borders, States and political regimes : a “remodeling of the Greater Middle East,” to use the expression of George W. Bush.

That is the new Middle East which Miss Rice claims to be the mid-wife of, and whose painful birth she is watching.

The idea is simple: substitute to the States inherited by the collapse of the Ottoman empire, smaller entities of mono-ethnic character, and neutralize those mini-states by setting up them permanently against each other. In other terms, the idea is to reconsider the secret agreements concluded in 1916 by the French and British empires, the Sykes-Picot agreements [6] and to establish rather a total domination of the Anglo-Saxons over the region. But in order to define new states, the existing ones must first be destroyed. That is what the Bush Administration and its allies have been doing since 5 years with the enthusiasm of a sorcerers apprentices. Judge the results:

 Occupied Palestine’s territory has been reduced by 7%; the Gaza strip and the West Bank have been separated by a wall; the Palestinian authority has been ruined, its ministers and parliamentarians kidnapped and imprisoned.
 The UN has ordered Lebanon to disarm, expel the Syrian forces and dissolve the Hezbollah; former Prime minister Rafic Harriri was murdered and French influence disappeared with him; the economic infrastructures of the country have been razed and more than 500.000 added refugees roam in the region.
 The Saddam Hussein dictatorship was replaced in Iraq by a still more cruel regime responsible for more than 3000 dead per month; in total anarchy, the country is on the verge of fragmenting into three distinct entities.
 The Taliban pseudo-emirate has given way to a pseudo-democracy ruled under the most obscurantist interpretation of the Charia, with an added feature, the poppy culture. De facto, Afghanistan is already divided among the different war lords and combat is generalizing. The central government has renounced to being obeyed even in the capital city.

In Washington, the disciples of Leo Strauss, more and more impatient, dream of extending their chaos to Sudan, to Syria and Iran. In this transition period, one no longer speaks of “market democracy”, but only of blood and tears.

Jacques Chirac who wished to intervene in Lebanon to defend French interests and sent there his Prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, had to renounce : during the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, George W. Bush forbade him from doing so stating that this was not an Israeli operation approved by the United States, but a United States operation being executed by Israel. Thus, M. de Villepin had nothing to declare to his interlocutors in Beyrut, only his words and his impotence.

More precisely, the project for destroying Lebanon was presented by Tsahal to the Bush administration a little more than a year ago, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported it. [7] It was at the center of political discussions at the yearly World Forum organized by the American Entreprise Institute, on June 2006 17th ad 18th at Beaver Creek. Benjamin Netanyahu and Dick Cheney met at length along with Richard Perle and Nathan Sharansky. The green light by the White House was given a few days after.

Tsahal’s military operations are supervised by the United States Department of Defense who determines the essentials of the strategy and the choice of targets. The main role is played by general Bantz Craddock, the commander in chief of the Southern Command. As he showed during the Desert Storm operation and, particularly, when he lead NATO land forces in Kosovo, Craddock is a specialist of armored vehicles. He is a trusted man of Donald Rumsfeld of whom he was the personal chief of staff, and for whom he developed the Guantanamo camp. Next November, he should be named commander of the European Command and of NATO. In that position, he could be called to command, beyond those forces already operating in Afghanistan and Soudan, the interposition force which NATO could deploy in Southern Lebanon.

The Israeli and United States generals have learned to know each other, since some thirty years, thanks to the exchanges organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) an association which obliges its cadre to follow the seminars on the doctrines of Leo Strauss.