October 4, 2024
STANLEY KUBRICK
made Dr Strangelove sixty years ago.
This black
comedy is old enough to be filmed in black and white, but remains a compelling
film because the characters seem to recur in real life: like Strangelove
himself, the sinister adviser who pushes a horrible, heartless plan of war and
death on a hapless president. Or General Ripper, the macho military man who
goes a bit “funny in the head.” And, of course, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake,
representing the British, who flap about in a vague, posh way while being
dragged along by US military adventures.
It’s fairly
common for US presidents to have a “Strangelove” figure: many thought he was
based on Henry Kissinger, who “Strangeloved” for successive presidents,
although he was actually drawn from earlier characters including Cold War
“intellectual” Herman Kahn.
President George
“Dubya” Bush was so hapless that he had several “Strangelove” type figures to
dream up the Iraq War, including Dick “shot his own best friend in the face”
Cheney and Don “known unknowns” Rumsfeld.
Joe Biden has a
kind of low-wattage Dr Strangelove figure, Brett McGurk, who helped persuade
the president to back Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
McGurk was just
a lawyer who got into US politics by being a judicial clerk. He has no direct
military experience, but he became a military adviser to George “Dubya” Bush,
Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Biden, showing that the Strangelove-y
military bureaucracy transcends supposed political divisions. Bombing
foreigners is bipartisan in the States.
McGurk grew his
career as a military bureaucrat via the Iraq war — that is to say he climbed a
ladder of disasters, although it was Iraqis who suffered while he raised
himself higher.
McGurk was a
legal adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from 2004 on. The
Coalition Provisional Authority was the colonial-style administration the US
imposed on Iraqis after “liberating” them from Saddam.
The “laws”
McGurk advised on were frankly disgusting, like “Coalition Provisional
Authority Order 17” which exempted all the US and British mercenaries from any
Iraqi laws, so they could kill without consequence.
Other laws gave
the Authority a huge sum of Iraqi cash, known as the Development Fund for Iraq,
or pushed privatisation so Western contractors could come and take over Iraqi
services. These laws helped US firms squeeze vast sums out of Iraq, while
leaving the “liberated” population powerless.
McGurk then
drafted Iraq’s “interim constitution” which used a “divide and rule” tactic of
institutionalising sectarian Shia-Sunni splits into Iraqi politics. This
exacerbated a violent civil war, leading to many deaths, but the US thought
this a price worth paying: As long as Iraqis didn’t unite against the US
occupier, they were happy.
McGurk was then
one of the advisers behind the 2007 “Surge,” one last attempt to flood Iraq
with more US troops to try control the multiple insurgencies faced by the
occupation-backed government.
Many US
politicians patted themselves on the back claiming the Surge “stabilised” Iraq,
but the continued attempt to shape Iraq with US firepower rather than handing
over actual power to Iraq’s own people just led to new, and more nihilistic
reactions in the region, like Isis.
McGurk’s career
was formed by the failures in Iraq, as the US tried to impose its will on
Iraq’s people. He was part of repeated attempts to try shape the country by US
firepower in favour of US corporations, leading to years of chaos and
bloodshed.
So it is no
surprise that as Biden’s “ National Security Council co-ordinator for the
Middle East and North Africa,” he is backing Israel’s attempts to impose its
will on the Palestinian, and now Lebanese, people using US-supplied firepower.
I think
understanding McGurk’s role will also help clear up a fairly common
misunderstanding about the US relationship with Israel.
McGurk’s general
advice is that Biden should rely on “partnerships” in the Middle East, both
with Israel and with authoritarian regimes including Saudi Arabia and Egypt:
the US is not always strong enough to permanently “project power” into the
region — as the Iraq war ultimately showed.
So instead it
must rely on local strong powers and “regional strong men.” Broadly speaking,
the United States wants to press down their main regional challenger, Iran, and
make sure the people of the “Arab Street” don’t give them a load of trouble.
So the US does
deals with, sells (or gives) arms to, and occasionally sends US fighter planes
to support, their “partners” in the region — which could be Saudi, or Egypt or
Israel.
It is for this
reason McGurk reportedly privately told Israel that the US would support
Israel’s missile attacks and invasion of Lebanon against Hezbollah targets: the
US is enthusiastic about Israel going to war with a group they see as a proxy
for the US regional enemy, Iran.
At the same
time, McGurk has been promoting a “peace deal” for Gaza, where Israel joins up
with the Saudis to impose a peace on the Palestinians, one where the war ends
and the Palestinians get a sort of well-funded “reconstruction” but settle for
a subordinate territory under heavy Saudi-Israeli influence.
The former, the
war in Lebanon, is happening. The latter might be a bit of a US pipe dream.
But what this
does show is the US is genuinely enthusiastic about Israel fighting their joint
enemies — “Iran and Iranian proxies” — but is not super happy about Israel
killing loads of Palestinians; although they can definitely put up with it, or
might even cynically hope the IDF “gets it done sooner rather than later.”
Many on the left
think Israel has lobbied and pushed the US political system to the point where
Israel has “captured” the US. And while this lobbying is real, the bigger truth
is that the US political establishment really sees Israel as a kind of “regional
strongman,” a cat’s paw they can rely on to fight their perceived enemies.
The deal is that
the US arms Israel to do the US’s bidding, rather than because the US is doing
Israel’s bidding.
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