Bubblehammerblog

As the sun sank over Cheney/Bush era, people around Bush started reminding him that he needed a Legacy. All Presidents need a Legacy, even ones who might have made a few mistakes. Look at Nixon, resigned from office in disgrace to avoid impeachment, but left a tour of China as his legacy.

'Yeah, said Bush, don't want some schoolkid in Crawford opening a book in a 100 years time, and thinking, who's this GW Bush asshole?'

For reasons not easy to get to the bottom of, Bush decided to make a Palestinian - Israeli settlement his legacy. He would broker a deal between the two parties - giving Israel security, and the US a friendly and compliant Palestinian administration. The US had been working with Mahmood Abbas and the Palestinian Authority for some time, helping them set up a viable civil administration, and arming and training the PA Security Services. All that was needed now, Bush heard from his advisors, was an election, like the one we had in Eye-rak. Looks great on CNN, and would strengthen Abbas's hand when he negotiates Palestine away to the Israelis.

Those in Mahmood Abbas's faction in Fatah were not keen on elections in 2006, it was too soon, they hadn't completed the roundup and arrest of Islamist and other opposition leaders, and they thought they might not win. But the clock was ticking on Bush's Legacy, so pressure was put on the PA, their misgivings were ignored, and the elections went ahead.

Hamas won 56% of the seats in the Palestinian Legislative Assembly. Condoleeza Rice claimed surprise at the result, 'I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by it', she told a press conference. 'Who the fuck recommended this?', said an outraged Pentagon official.

It's at this point we begin to glimpse the mind of a great leader and thinker at work. The single biggest obstacle standing in the way of his peace settlement Legacy, Hamas, the Islamist terst organisation, had become the democratically elected majority in the Palestinian government. He needed a strategy. He asked around, but in the end decided himself. Here it comes... Saddle up boys, we're gonna run 'em outa town.


He was going to bring about a Palestinian civil war. For this purpose he put to work 'our boy', as he called him, Mohammad Dahlan, CIA asset and director of the PA's Preventive Security Service, a highly professional, US trained, Fatah goon squad. With the nod from the Israelis, the US arranged a tool-up shipment, via friendly Arab countries, of $120m in light arms and cash.

This is what fuelled the violence, killing hundreds of people, that resulted in the Hamas takeover of Gaza. How long was it going to be before the Israelis took on Hamas?

This is a much abbreviated version of a story by David Rose in the current Vanity Fair. You are urged to read it,HERE.

Extracts:

With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
........

Again, on Obama's remark about 'facing down Communism and fascism'. Didn't they sound oddly old fashioned? If we sit for a moment in a quiet, fragrant room, perhaps recall a haiku to evoke a state of receptiveness, we can decode these two words more easily.

Communism points in the direction of what's been called the pink tide, rising in Latin America. The regimes Alberto Morales in Bolivia, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, are both in the process of disentangling their economies from US corporate interests, and are using the proceeds of the sale of their resources to improve the lives of the poor. To the Imperial Court and its scribes this is beginning to look like Socialism, or worse.

Chavez wears fatigues and a red beret, and has very cordial relations with Fidel. Morales is a decent Indigenous person, but all kinds of leftwing schemers have his ear.

Obama's new advisor on Bolivia, Greg Craig, heads a legal team that represents former President of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a rightwing hardman, who once had a good business privatising Bolivian companies and selling them off to US corporations. Craig's view of Bolivia is that Morales is leading 'an offensive against Democracy'. Note the military turn of phrase.

Fascism clearly means Islamofacism, a term now beginning to be preferred to Bush's less specific 'Tursts', a word showing signs of becoming meaningless through repetition.

A paper further examining the meaning and provenance of these terms in relation to US Foreign Policy is in preparation.

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