Carol Devine-Molin, GOP Operative, Fails at History
Press Action
Friday, February 25, 2005
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/nimmo02252005/
By Kurt Nimmo
Let us explore the comments of Carol Devine-Molin, billed as a “Republican District Leader, a community activist, and the host of ‘On The Right Side,’ a local program sponsored by the Republicans and seen throughout most of Westchester County, New York.” Ms. Devine-Molin has, according to her bio, a “BA in psychology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and an MA in forensic psychology (social psychology) from John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) in New York City.” It appears history was not on the curriculum. In her The Unholy Alliance Between Iran and Syria, Devine-Molin writes:
The Middle East is a seething caldron that wrests the attention of the world. And, at the current time, Iran and Syria are the two most odious players in the region. Their sins are many, including constant efforts to enflame the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but let’s focus upon the circumstances that directly affect our troops—and our interests—in Iraq.
No explanation offered here why the “Middle East is a seething caldron.” No mention of European powers plotting and conniving in the Middle East in the name of commercial exploitation. No mention of the British and the Turks slugging it out for control of what is now Iraq. No mention of Husayn ibn Ali, sharif of Mecca, throwing in his lot with the British as he fancied himself the potentate of the Arab world. No mention of the British, who promised to fulfill Arab nationalist desires, betraying Husayn’s son, Prince Faisal, who later became Iraq’s first king.
Or is the fact mentioned that at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, under Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, Iraq was formally made a Class A mandate entrusted to Britain—in other words Britain carved off a chunk of the Arab word for its own use, normal behavior due to the fact Britain was a colonial power at the time.
It didn’t take long for the Arabs to revolt against colonial occupation and exploitation. It should also be noted, considering the current political and military situation in Iraq, that Sunni and Shia ulama temporarily put aside their differences to struggle against British colonial rule.
In response to the 1920 revolt, the “British replaced the military regime with a provisional Arab government, assisted by British advisers and answerable to the supreme authority of the high commissioner for Iraq,” writes Ronald L. Kuipers. Again, relative to the current situation in Iraq, history serves: “The provisional government was aided by the large number of trained Iraqi administrators who returned home when the French ejected Faisal from Syria. Like earlier Iraqi governments, however, the provisional government was composed chiefly of Sunni Arabs; once again the Shias were underrepresented. (Emphasis added.) “Ultimately, the British-created monarchy suffered from a chronic legitimacy crisis: the concept of a monarchy was alien to Iraq. Despite his Islamic and pan-Arab credentials, Faisal was not an Iraqi, and, no matter how effectively he ruled, Iraqis saw the monarchy as a British creation. The continuing inability of the government to gain the confidence of the people fueled political instability well into the 1970s.” By the 1970s, of course, the U.S. client Saddam Hussein was in power. In fact, the Ba’athist coup resulting in Saddam’s rule was entirely a CIA affair. (See Richard Sale, Saddam Was key in early CIA plot; also see David Morgan, Ex-U.S. Official Says CIA Aided Baathists.)
Our GOP commentator also fails to mention the Sykes-Picot agreement between France and Britain, secretly devised to portion out the Arab world for their benefit and expediting the theft of petroleum.
Nor does she mention the “cauldron” created in Egypt in 1919 by the British after the Wafd Party nationalist leader Saad Zaglul and three others were exiled to Malta for engaging in activism. In response to riots in reaction to the persecution of the Wafd Party, the British killed 800 Egyptians. Eventually a Wafd delegation went to Paris to plead its case for independence at the Allies Peace Conference but they were betrayed by the United States as it threw its lot in with the British. At the same time Syrians were agitating for independence from France.
The American King-Crane Commission recommended the creation of a single Arab state it called “Greater Syria,” including Lebanon and Palestine. King-Crane suggested this arrangement be administered under American mandatory power but the French and the British undermined the effort and made sure the King-Crane Commission report never saw the light of day. American dominance would arrive later.
In Syria, when Faisal proclaimed himself king, he was quickly dethroned by French General Henri Gouraud and driven into exile in Europe. France set about carving up Syria into even smaller pieces. Lebanon was created out of the former Ottoman vilayet (an administrative division) of Beirut together with Mt. Lebanon. The reason the French did all this carving and hacking of the former Ottoman Empire was to divide and rule the Arabs.
“The French policy of setting Syrian political groups off against one another was seen as the chief factor in Syria’s turbulent history of frequent coups and political instability following independence in 1946,” writes Ted Thornton. C.H. Jansen points out how the French created a “minority psychosis” in Syria and Lebanon as a form of “divide and rule,” a legacy operational in Lebanon to the present day (see Jansen’s Militant Islam, Harper and Row, 1979, 104-105). Between 1925 and 1927, the French killed 6,000 Syrians in their various attempts to snuff out Syrian nationalism.
As early as 1918, the British attempted to establish a protectorate over Iran. The following year, when the British forced the Anglo-Persian Agreement on Iran and the agreement was signed by the cabinet of Vosough al-Doleh, reducing Iran to a British colony, widespread nationalist opposition resulted.
The Brits found their man in Reza Shah Pahlavi, a member of the Cossack Brigade, who orchestrated a British contrived coup and eventually deposed the Qajar Dynasty and thus became the Shah of Iran. Shah Pahlavi was forced to abdicate the Peacock throne during WWII and his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was installed. The new Shah, protected by the British, formed a Constituent Assembly, and extended his powers as a constitutional monarch.
In 1951, Mohammad Mossadegh was elected Premier of the Majlis (Parliament) and nationalized Iran’s oil, an action soon to result in a CIA and MI6 orchestrated coup against Mossadegh and democracy in Iran. The Shah, with the support of the United States, ruled Iran with an iron fist and a brutal secret police (SAVAK) until 1979, when a popular revolution led by bazaaris (merchants), industrial workers, poor urban dwellers, white-collar workers, and the Shia clergy ousted him.
Thus, as the above abbreviated history lesson spells out, Carol Devine-Molin’s “seething caldron” was essentially created by Europeans and Americans, not “odious” Arabs and Persians.
Devine-Molin continues:
The struggling democracy of Iraq is flanked by Iran and Syria, which are aiding and abetting the flow of terrorists into Iraq, including al-Qaeda operatives. And, of course, these terrorists, along with the Ba’athist insurgents, are generating mortal attacks upon coalition forces and the Iraqi people.... Americans have sufficient reasons to be furious with the tyrannical terror-states of Iran and Syria for their heinous actions in Iraq alone.
In fact, this is nonsense. “Suspected foreign fighters account for less than 2% of the 5,700 captives being held as security threats in Iraq, a strong indication that Iraqis are largely responsible for the stubborn insurgency,” USA Today reported last July. “The numbers represent one of the most precise measurements to date of the composition of the insurgency and suggest that some Bush administration officials have overstated the role of foreign holy warriors, or jihadists, from other Arab states. The figures also suggest that Iraq isn’t as big a magnet for foreign terrorists as some administration critics have asserted.”
But, Iraq aside, these outlaw regimes are destabilizing the entire region in pivotal ways: Iran is developing nuclear weaponry, systematically gaming and refusing to halt its program; and as the premier terror state of the Middle East—the most prolific supporter of terrorism—it also lends a helping-hand to Hezbollah and a variety of other terror groups in the region. As for Syria, it has ensconced its troops in Lebanon for the past fifteen years, creating a suffocating occupation that is now being diligently protested by the Lebanese; and it provides funding, training and safe haven for Hamas and Hezbollah (and other) terrorists, which utilize southern Lebanon as a launching pad for attacks upon Israel.
More nonsense. As the Washington Post reported late last year, “the International Atomic Energy Agency reported [on November 15] that it had found no evidence [Iran] had a nuclear weapons program and that Tehran’s recent cooperation with the agency has been very good.”
Indeed, Iran supports Hezbollah, a Shia resistance organization created when Israel invaded southern Lebanon, as Devine-Molin notes. “Hezbollah was conceived in 1982 by a group of clerics after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon,” explains the BBC. “It was formed primarily to offer resistance to the Israeli occupation.”
Devine-Molin, however, is highly selective with her facts; for instance, she does not mention that Hezbollah enjoys “considerable backing within Lebanon” and its “social services program [is] popular with the Shia community.” As the Brookings Institution explains, “Syria and Iran openly support (Hezbollah), and much of the Arab world regards it as heroic, for its successful resistance against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon (the only time that Arab arms have forced Israel to surrender territory), and legitimate, because of its participation in Lebanese parliamentary politics. Even officials in France, Canada, and other Western nations have acknowledged the value of its social and political projects.” Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, long ago abandoned his insistence on a theocratic government in Lebanon, a move that went a long way to turning Hezbollah into a mainstream political party.
In Rafik al-Hariri and the Syria Blame Game, I write: “Syria was a reluctant player in Lebanese internal affairs, contrary to what we are told by the Strausscons and especially the duplicitous Likudites in Israel. ‘In July, 1976, the Syrian army entered Lebanon and imposed a ceasefire [during the Lebanese civil war]. Syria involved itself initially to protect Christians from defeat at the hands of the Muslims. President Asad of Syria had been duped by Henry Kissinger and the Israelis into believing that if he, Asad, did not enter the war to rein in the PLO and the Muslims, then Israel would have to go in and do the job itself, a prospect Asad found terrifying. Kissinger played skillfully on Asad’s fears and succeeded in dividing the Arabs further to the benefit of Israel,’ writes Ted Thornton, summarizing the work of Patrick Seale (Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East).” As the Canadian Islamic Congress has recently declared, the “presence of Syrian military forces in Lebanon is an internal matter which must be resolved between those two nations. Syria’s involvement adheres to the terms of the Altaif Peace Agreement signed by both parties to end Lebanon’s civil war, which lasted from 1975-1990.”
Hamas and Hezbollah have already indicated that they will continue to attack Israel from Lebanon despite [UN resolution 1559]. Moreover, as noted by journalist George Will on the ABC Sunday morning program, Syria apparently believes in the myth of Lebanon as “greater Syria”, which causes Syrians to possess a sense of entitlement to Lebanese territories. All things considered, the situation in Lebanon appears poised to escalate.
Ms. Devine-Molin only provides enough information to demonize Hamas and Hezbollah. “Save for the disputed Shebaa Farms area, the Israel-Lebanon border region has been largely peaceful since Israel withdrew its troops in 2000, after a long and bloody occupation,” the BBC reported early last year.
“On May 24, 2000, Israel withdrew its troops from a large territory in southern Lebanon which it had been occupying since 1978. A significant issue relating to the withdrawal remains unsettled. This relates to the status of certain villages and adjacent land on the eastern side of Alsheikh Mountain, known as the ‘Shebaa Farms’, which have been occupied by Israel since 1967,” explains the Shebaa Farms Foundation, a Lebanese organization.
In fact, the vast majority of Hezbollah attacks are against Israeli military targets in the disputed Shebaa Farms area, although Devine-Molin makes it appear Hezbollah consistently attacks Israel proper. It is also interesting to note that the Shebaa Farms issue reveals post-colonial bias on the part of the United Nations; according to the UN, based on the 1923 Anglo-French demarcation and the 1949 Armistice line, Shebaa Farms is considered part of Syria and thus territory captured by Israel during the Six Day War.
Moreover, as noted above, “Greater Syria” is not a myth, as Devine-Molin would have us believe. It is a historical fact. Traditionally, Syria comprised an irregular rectangle bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountains in the north, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Sinai deserts in the east and south; in the modern context, this would include Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip (or Palestine). Lebanon is in fact an artificial creation of the French under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.
Personally, I’m short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic regarding progress in the Middle East. Although, President Bush has articulated the view that diplomacy and sanctions are the desired methods to bring about needed change, he also noted that the military option will always remain on the table. Both Iran and Syria are tough and unyielding, which certainly argues for the possibility of limited military action (i.e. air strikes) to obtain sought after results.
It is a peculiar sort of arrogance that demands “sanctions” or “air strikes” to “obtain sought after results” not in the interest of the Syrian, Iranian, and Lebanese people but rather the governments of the United States and Israel. Devine-Molin ignores the fact that in 1998 the Lebanese parliament elected as president a pro-Syrian Lebanese army commander, Gen. Emile Lahoud, and when the United Nations demanded last year that Syria withdraw all troops from Lebanon the parliament extended Lahoud’s term for three years after amending the constitution. For the United States and Israel, Syrian influence and the political will of the Lebanese parliament are intolerable and this very well may be why former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri was assassinated on February 14.
“If Syria killed Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister and mastermind of its revival after the civil war, it must be judged an act of political suicide,” opines Patrick Seale for the Guardian. “Syria is already under great international pressure from the US, France and Israel. To kill Hariri at this critical moment would be to destroy Syria’s reputation once and for all and hand its enemies a weapon with which to deliver the blow that could finally destabilize the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down.” In short, Syria may not be as “tough” as Devine-Molin would have us believe.
Iran is another matter entirely. It is plain foolish to believe “sanctions” or “air strikes” will change the behavior of the mullahs in Tehran who are, after all, reacting predictably to events in their neighborhood—the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Bush’s saber-rattling in their direction—and have remained staunchly anti-American since the Shah was ousted in 1979 and for good reason, considering the history lesson above. Devine-Molin may not remember the Shah and his brutal secret police, SAVAK—deemed by Amnesty International in 1976 to have the worst human rights record on the planet—a goon squad and torture operation trained by the CIA and Mossad. However, the Iranian people remember these details and are not interested in repeating that part of their history, thank you very much.
Carol Devine-Molin may not realize it, but this time around it will not be so easy to force “needed change” on Iran—or maybe even Syria. “We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats,” Iranian vice president Mohammad Reza Aref said after meeting Syrian PM Naji al-Otari last week. “Our Syrian brothers are facing specific threats and we hope they can benefit from our experience. We are ready to give them any help necessary.”
As Israel’s experience with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the current experience of the United States in Iraq indicate, it will not be a cakewalk in the Middle East this time around. The Arabs and Iranians have learned from history and are prepared to resist.
It would seem Devine-Molin and the Bush neocons have not learned from history. In fact, they appear wholly incognizant of it.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, a collection of essays published by Dandelion Books. Visit his weblog at KurtNimmo.com.