If it's not too obvious, it seems worth saying that the Middle East complex of issues -- fundamentalism, terrorist attacks on the U.S., oil, and Palestine -- is what will dominate U.S. political discourse for some time to come, much in the way that SE Asia did in decades past. The future of the anti-globalization movement will depend on how it is able to link up with this.
As before in SE Asia, the conflict presently entails a heavy Democratic Party/organized labor investment in a bad political position -- wholly uncritical support for Sharon's campaign. This is unfortunate in that it sustains bad U.S. policy, but the silver lining is that it leaves the field open for a left analysis.
In SE Asia there was nothing so obvious as oil to buttress a simple story of what was going on. On the other hand, the ME oil story is clearly more complicated than the U.S. role in, say, Venezuela. The challenge to left economists is to amplify an analysis that locates material factors -- such as they are, or aren't -- in the broader conflict. Ownership and control of oil is clearly huge; how much it has to do with Sharon's offensive is not so clear. More broadly, there has been a long-running debate about the use of Israel and zionism in international oil politics. Is Israel just a pain in the ass to U.S. policy in this vein, an artifact of domestic politics, or does it play a major instrumental function.
The politics take more skill than in re: Vietnam because there are two legitimate national aspirations in question, not simple national independence of a ethnically uniform nation from the U.S. and its errand boys. That a jewish homeland is involved also raises a batch of risk factors, either in terms of giving encouragement to genuinely unsavory, rightist elements, or in crafting a flawed, chauvinistic message that alienates likely sympathizers in the U.S. I might note in the last regard that Palestinian organizers at the march yesterday discouraged the use of anti-*jewish* slogans and images, even trying to dissuade some people from displaying Sharon with a swastika on his forehead -- something I might be moved to do myself.
Aside from the importance of relating the mystery of petro- imperialism to U.S. and Israeli aggressions, I want to suggest a few points of unity for the politics of this era, as far as 'foreign policy' is concerned:
1 There is no uniquely legitimate 'side,' as far as national aspirations are concerned. There is broad agreement as to where we must end up -- with two states. Everybody knows this. Similarly, everyone understands that both states need security and economic integrity. One can justify a larger Israeli defense apparatus because it has security concerns beyond Palestine; and one can justify reparations to Palestine because its economy has been strangled and now nearly destroyed by Israel.
2 Given (1), there is no purpose in moral distinctions between two sides that are both complicit in the deaths of many innocent people. This is not the same as recognizing and condemning the leading edges of such atrocities on both sides -- the Sharon/Peres government, and the Islamic/Al Aqsa bombers. Nobody's hands are completely clean, but it is still possible to make distinctions as to who is a likely participant in a settlement and who is not.
3 The Israeli argument is that they are doing no more than what the U.S. did in response to 9/11. I think we miss a point if we concede that the U.S. was no more concerned w/collateral damage in Afghanistan than Israel is in the West Bank. I would say the whole point of Sharon's offensive is to wreak collateral damage. As far as mayhem was concerned, the U.S. aim was to destroy the Taliban government and the OBL network. One does not have to agree on the justification for the Afgh campaign to decry the long-standing excesses of Israel in the West Bank.
4 The Israeli argument in one sense is an opportunity. It is quite true that what they do resembles what the U.S. has done in the past. We should welcome this matter being opened up. One does not have to argue about, say, the U.S. role in WWII to recognize the purpose of U.S. deeds in Dresden, Hiroshima, or Sherman marching through Georgia. More important I would say are potential U.S. interventions -- Iraq, Colombia, Somalia -- in the near term. The task in my view is to be able to parse out whatever slim pretexts there are in terms of U.S. domestic security from the likely preponderance of interests rooted in geopolitical ambitions, a.k.a. imperialism. I say preponderance because most of what the U.S. military could do against Al Queda has now been done. The future entails killing fifty people for a chance to wing one bad guy.
In a nutshell, a blanket equation of U.S. with Israel, or of Sharon with all zionists/israelis/jews, a failure to make distinctions among political personalities in assorted quarters, or an indulgence of the desire to condemn U.S. policy wholesale, from top to bottom, now yesterday and forever, will not make for good radical politics.
mbs