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[Abe Abraham]

• صناعة القرار الأمريكي بين مواجهة الواقع وأوهام القوة
  
  
  American decision-making between confronting reality and illusions of power
  
  By Dr Yousif Makki
  22/10/2002
  
  This talk does not at all aim to diminish the size of the qualitative capacity, in the fields of manufacturing, armament and scientific knowledge of the United States of America, nor to question its enormous economic capacity and its position on the throne of global domination and its containment of the United Nations body and its uniqueness in making decisive international decisions, for these are matters that are not in dispute. For us at least. However, one can argue that the American decision is, in the first place, a human decision in that it is made and implemented by individuals whose decisions are governed by a group of impulses, visions, and interests. Accordingly, those decisions, like other decisions made by individuals, are subject to laws of right and wrong.
  
  Perhaps what concerns us, as Arabs, in this regard is the relationship of those decisions to our existence, our interests, and our future. More specifically, what concerns us are the declared and implicit American threats launched by the American administration these days against the Arab nation, and these are threats that although everyone recognizes their seriousness and dangers to our national security, the worst thing they bear for our nation and our security is not that the United States is actually capable of attacking and inflicting It hurts us, but it is the surrender of the Arab leaderships and leaderships, starting with their inability to resist and defend security and sovereignty.
  
  This situation that the Arab nation is going through is reminiscent of the situation of the Greek civilization during the era of its collapse, when Sparta besieged the city of Athens and defeated it at the end of the fifth century BC. Political supremacy shifted from Athens, the source of Greek philosophy and art. The result of this was the degeneration of the Athenian mind and its independence. And when Alexander the Great died, and rupture and decline began to characterize the Greek civilization, superstitious ideas and a spirit of surrender poured into it, and the Stoic, Epicurean and agnostic doctrines began to spread, which meant nothing but acceptance of defeat, and an attempt to achieve psychological balance for the defeated people by bringing pleasure and pleasure.
  
  In that era, sayings emerged similar in essence to the sayings that are now common on the tongues of some Arab leaders and elites, such as the Greek saying: “If victory is impossible, it should be despised.” The equivalent of it now is the official statements that it is not possible to refrain from providing facilities to America even if it is used against other Arab countries, because these countries are linked to agreements and treaties that are difficult to transgress with the American administration, and that America is the only pole in international politics, and it is not possible to object to its desires. The other Greek saying: “The secret of peace lies in not making our achievements equal to our desires.” The equivalent to it among some Arab leaders and elites is the Palestinian Authority’s call to accept offers made by Israel, through American mediation, to achieve a peaceful settlement and liquidate the Arab-Israeli conflict, under the slogan of achieving the possible, although at the cost of the rights, constants and principles.
  
  The United States, from the point of view of the majority of Arab leaders, and a section of the Arab elites, is a destiny that all Arabs cannot face. In this case, the best that we can reach is to implement our skin from the confrontation and to surrender to it while it practices blackmail and pounces on the Arab countries one after the other. The desires of the United States, there is no difference, although we know that there are dozens of decisions issued by those parties against the Zionist entity, none of them have been implemented despite the lapse of decades since their adoption by the international community, such as Resolutions 181, 242 and 338..
  
  Some Arabs join in demanding the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction from one another, even though the threat they face requires them to work tirelessly on having these weapons in their arsenal, to brandish them and use them as preventive weapons against Israeli arrogance and arrogance.
  
  The picture that the official media paints for many Arab countries is that the United States is capable of implementing all its plans, and that it has the capacity to make it impossible to object to its desires. The defeated weave in their souls an exaggerated and exaggerated image, more like myth than reality, of American power. This United States is capable of crushing everyone, and it has sensors that make it distinguish between creatures and what is underground, behind walls, and inside caves.. between humans and animals. Rather, it can also distinguish between the smell of one person and another through a machine, and it can detect weapons caches from the air, distinguish between a soldier and a commander, and read newspapers and papers in wastebaskets. It can send its soldiers to cities and villages equipped with concealment caps, so they move inside them without fear, storm the hostile army camps and destroy missile launchers without anyone being able to see them. Many press reports indicate that a thousand American soldiers have already entered behind the Iraqi lines and started directly to carry out their sabotage operations.
  
  
  This state of fascination with the opponent creates reasons for submission and submission to his will, and creates an absence of awareness that obscures from memory other facts that are no less important than fascination with the language of force. Those fascinated by force, for example, avoid asking the question why this great force is unable to arrest a sniper, just a single sniper moving from one street to another, who in the last month has begun to spread panic among American citizens residing in Washington DC opposite the White House and managed to killed a number of civilians? Why didn't the American sensors known for their accuracy monitor and arrest him? Why and why?
  
  Questions follow and insist on an answer. Why are the various US administrations unable to protect their embassies abroad? And where were her danger sensors when she was attacked? How can these embassies confront acts of sabotage without being prepared for it, as has happened time and time again?! And why wouldn't the American battleships with superior accuracy and destructive efficiency be able to sense the presence of a small rubber boat in the waters of the Arabian Sea that could kill it in moments, and dozens of Americans would fall victim to the attack? We also say that no one can argue with us that the September attacks of last year exposed the two strengths of the American empire: the army and the economy, and it is never justified, and it is a flagrant failure that reaches the point of catastrophe that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are outside the American sensor’s circle. .
  
  And we go back again to mention in the form of the question, Was America not defeated in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and forced to withdraw carrying with it the bodies of its dead? Wasn't that a serious miscalculation that President Kennedy started when he sent 5,000 soldiers to support General Diem, and when President Johnson assumed power following the assassination of Kennedy, he found that the 5,000 soldiers were not sufficient to suppress the uprising of the Vietnamese people, so he doubled the number, doubled it again, and then doubled. A third time, and so on, in successions that reveal the inability to resolve, until the number of American soldiers in Vietnam reached more than 500 thousand soldiers, and the number of dead soldiers reached more than 50 thousand soldiers, while the wounded exceeded a quarter of a million.
  
  
  We will be told that what happened in Indochina took place during the Cold War. It's okay, but those who defeated America in that war were not the Soviets or the Chinese, but rather the locals. We will be told, but it was the Soviet weapon that won. And we will answer: What is the matter with us, then, that we did not win in our battles?! Do we lack weapons now!
  
  
  So it was not the Cold War that made the American defeat in Southeast Asia, but rather the bravery of its people in expelling the invaders. We remind those intrigued that the United States has also left with the bodies of its dead from Lebanon, and from Somalia as well, without there being any Soviet support for the Lebanese or Somalis, and it has so far been unable to resolve its battle in Afghanistan. It has not yet been recorded in history that America was able to resolve a decisive battle on its own.
  
  Arab pacts and treaties, kinship bonds, religion, language, blood relations, and a common history get lost in the crowd of questions, noise and clamor. Many Arab leaders forget that there is also a charter for the League of Arab States, a treaty for joint Arab defense, and the minutes of many intensive meetings of the Arab ministers of defense, foreign affairs, and media, which are crowded in the archives of the League’s headquarters in Cairo, all of which indicate that the Arab countries consider any aggression against any Arab country as aggression against All Arabs must confront it, and that Arab leaders are committed in this regard to the concept of collective Arab national security. Thus, accepting American dictates has only one meaning, which is the collapse of the concept of Arab solidarity and collective national security, and the declaration of the death of all treaties and agreements that Arab leaders signed with each other, as leaders belonging to one nation.
  
  Is there an Arab review of these positions before the flood hit us?!

[Za-Ilmaknun]

Interesting read.

"The secret of peace lies in not making our achievements equal to our desires." rings a bell !

"So it was not the Cold War that made the American defeat in Southeast Asia, but rather the bravery of its people in expelling the invaders. We remind those intrigued that the United States has also left with the bodies of its dead from Lebanon, and from Somalia as well, without there being any Soviet support for the Lebanese or Somalis, and it has so far been unable to resolve its battle in Afghanistan. It has not yet been recorded in history that America was able to resolve a decisive battle on its own." so it is the fear itself that one has one to fear. If there is a will there is a way.