I have been thinking about what Abrams said about this last Sunday on Fariid Zakarariyah's show. The usual apologia for Israel's blockade of Gaza centers around the need for Israel to prevent the importation of weapons making materials into Gaza. Abrams walked away from that after a nod in that direction.

Like the "stand up guy" that he is, Elliott freely admitted that the carefully orchestrated blockade is intended to wear down the support of the Gazans for Hamas. To make the point more clearly he said that this psychological campaign is effective and the polling (of all things) shows that support for Hamas in Gaza is declining as opposed to support for Mahmoud Abbas and the once hated (but now supported) PA/PLO. So, what this is really about is the desperate Israeli/AIPAC attempt to resolve the Palestinian political conflict in favor of the faction with which it is expected the best deal for Israel can be obtained.

Well, I listened to the incredulous Charlie Rose in his interview with Khalid Mishall in Damascus. Did anyone else? Listen to it with open ears, with an open heart. Try it. After that ask yourself why US policy is what it is. Better yet, ask Dennis Ross or Geoffrey Feltman.

Washington's bipartisan groveling to and knee-jerk support for Israeli actions are nearing an epic success. They are shattering the last of the thin veneer of Westernization in Turkey; reminding the Turks they are Muslims; pushing the Turks into the Muslim world; and encouraging Islamism in Turkey. This is a nightmarish achievement of Homeric dimensions and was caused by Israel and its U.S.-citizen friends corrupting, intimidating, and ultimately dictating policy to U.S. politicians and media. With an economy on the rocks, two wars being lost, and Obama's lynch-law-style chase of BP unfolding, we find the decision about war in the Levant, and whether the United States joins it, is in the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ability to divine what God wants done to protect His chosen people. This is insane.

The solution to the problem is for America to stop intervening. No U.S. politician should tell the Israelis how to defend themselves. If Israel's leaders believe their country's security depends on the IDF boarding and shooting up relief convoys then that needs to be done. Israelis alone are responsible for shaping their security requirements and living with the consequences. On the Palestinian/Arab side, Washington should stop telling Muslims what to do or not do in dealing with Israel. The Israelis and Muslims are locked in a religious war where compromise means turning your back on God. God, Mr. Netanyahu says, gave the Israelis an eternal deed to Palestine, and innumerable Muslim leaders claim God did likewise for Muslims. We should walk away and let them test the validity of their God-given deeds in a war sure to ruin both.

From the U.S. perspective, moreover, non-intervention would allow us to stop saying "yes" to the question: “Are we really obligated to be endlessly damaged politically and diplomatically, put at increasing disadvantage on the battlefield, and drained of financial resources to protect Israel, a nation whose actions in and toward the United States -- espionage, technology theft and transfer, political corruption, humiliating and rousing dissent against a sitting president, etc. -- can only be seen as an enemy's behavior?” Once we can answer in the negative, most Americans will see how crazy it is for the world's greatest power to be involved in the Levant. If we stand aside, what possible impact can an IDF raid on a relief convoy or strafing of Palestinians have on U.S. security? Or what possible impact can a Hamas suicide bomb in Israel have on U.S. security? If Israel goes to war against Syria or vice versa, so what? Israel and its Muslim neighbors want to fight this religious war for their God. Let them. Stability is a much over-valued commodity; in fact, more stability would be found in a post-war period after both sides burned out their lust for religious war.

Israel particularly merits Washington's cold shoulder because it has bred a fifth column in the United States. I hope many Americans have read or heard the messages delivered by their war-wanting, fellow U.S.-citizens since the IDF raid. In print and on television and radio, Americans have been lectured by Israel-First propagandists like Charles Krauthammer, Eliot Cohen, Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes, and Steven Rosen on their absolute duty to support Israel. and on how questioning or opposing Israel's actions weakens U.S. security and connotes anti-Semitism. They argued, in other words, it is the duty of Americans to shut up and feel honored to see their taxes aid Israel's territorial aggrandizement and have their soldier-children die as Israel's cannon fodder.

If Americans doubt where the primary loyalty of the Israel Firsters is fixed, I would recommend listening to Steven Rosen's discussion with Peter Beinart last week on NPR's "On the Media." Rosen spoke as if there is a codicil to the 1st Amendment that forbids Americans from even mild criticism of Israel; he left no doubt he would support such a ban on his fellow citizens. Steyn and Pipes, on the other hand, made a strange attempt to paint Turkey as a U.S. enemy because Istanbul took exception to the IDF killing its nationals. Cohen and Krauthammer were more traditional, using the stale but always reliable make-Americans-feel-guilty-about-the-holocaust ruse.

Cohen: "The folly here is to think that leaving the Israelis open to these kinds of diplomatic attacks [from other nations] will buy good will in the Middle East that gets its opinions form Al Jazeera and a venomous media that routinely prints outrageous lies and hate literature that echoes Nazi Germany."

Krauthammer: "The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution."

Using Cohen's words more accurately, the "folly here" to think the existence of Israel or Palestine matters to U.S. national security. For forty years, Washington has spent untold time, diplomatic resources, and money promoting peace between Muslims and Israelis who want war. For the effort, Americans have: (a) earned the undying hatred of tens of millions of Muslims; (2) led Israeli politicians to believe we are a rich, militarily powerful automaton they can cynically manipulate by using terms like "holocaust" and "Nazi" and "final solution" whenever their acts bring war near; (3) convinced Arab tyrants we will intervene at the last second to stop all-out war when their murderous surrogates spur Israel to defend itself; and, worst of all, (4) allowed the growth of a fifth column of U.S.-citizen Israel Firsters (see above) that corrupts our politics, opposes free speech, and wants to take all Americans to war for their own personal religious beliefs.

This is too high a price for the United States to pay for anything that goes on in a sandpit at the Mediterranean's eastern end.

America first ... and a pox on all in the Levant.

The Mavi Marmara incident reveals the inner dynamics of a Muslim World in search of restoration — and the intense competition to fulfill this deep promise

This is language that we have not heard since the time of Gamal Abdul Nasser.” Thus wrote the influential chief editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, referring to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fiery response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza flotilla – adding that such “manly” positions and rhetoric had “disappeared from the dictionaries of our Arab leaders (since the demise of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser).” He lamented, “Arab regimes now represent the only friends left to Israel.” (From the CSM, here)

What is Renovatio? Simply, it is a national revival that takes the form of a restoration: Where things once right and true triumphantly return. Renovatio represents identity reborn.

This is how Romans and Byzantines spoke of restoration. But for them it was not simply the nation restored (lower case) — Renovatio had an imperial and universal meaning: The world restored, the whole of Romanitas brought back to its full glory.

The world of Islam was the last great creation of Greco-Roman antiquity, and Muslims today still hold to a sacred narrative of identity rooted in Renovatio.

What does this mean, and why is it important? It means that Muslim history for 1500 years has been a narrative of falling down followed by Renovatio, just as for 1500 years it was so for Romano-Byzantines. After all Islam itself emerged during the 7th century falling down of the great Renovatio of Justinian.

So in the 19th century we see Muhammad Ali and the Sudanese Mahdi. So in the 20th century we see the emergence of Pan-Arabism and the Brotherhood. Nasser was thus the Muslim World’s best-effort 20th century Renovatio.

In our new century we can see a slew of Muslim competitors eagerly invested in the waiting Renovatio. Al Qaeda represents the most romantic within Muslim imagination, seeking to reawaken the mythic calling of original Ghazi and the emotional claim of Al Ansar, the Brothers of Muhammad, sweeping out of the Wilderness like a wind from the desert.

But their framing was primitive and savage: Their fantasy resonates only with emotionally susceptible Arab men. The Muslim Brotherhood has been far more effective in evoking historical memory and sacred narrative among real communities. This is what resonates with most Sunni Muslims: Emphasizing social welfare and community virtue and shared piety. Brotherhood proselytizing is remarkably effective.

Then there is the premiere Sunni state: Saudi Arabia. Not only is it the richest of the rich but also the guardian of the sacred sites. It has aggressively pushed its Wahhabist mission throughout Islam and beyond. Moreover those it cannot convert it believes it can always buy.

Finally there is the Shi’a vision of Renovatio: Steeped since 1979 in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its claim as agent of restoration is vested in part in its provenance as original core of the exalted Abbasid Khilafat itself, but even more in its calls to purity and sacrifice in pursuit of Muslim transcendence. Here Hizbull’ah is the authentic representation of everything that a Shi’a Renovatio stands for, implicitly indicting corrupt Sunni state establishments (like Saudi Arabia and Egypt) that are no more than false beacons to Muslim restoration.

These have been the competition. But remember, all of these contemporary enterprises have either failed or settled into empty unrealized national establishments (like Saudi Arabia or Iran).

So this takes us back. We ask: What was the last great Muslim Renovatio?

We called it the Ottoman Empire. Paradoxically the first triumphant Ottomans saw themselves as leading not a Muslim restoration, but a true Romano-Byzantine Renovatio. Mehmet II conquered Constantinople as the new Basileus Autocrator, restoring an empire divided since the 7th century. Hence he gave equal weight to both “east and west.” He was a ruler at least half-Greek, and he carefully co-opted the Byzantine aristocracy and Patriarchies into his vision of Romanitas reunited. A couple generations later Suleiman the Magnificent actually imagined himself as Justinian, reading Prokopios by his bedside in original Greek. He sought to recreate the whole of the old Roman Empire. His vision failed at Lepanto and before Vienna.

But historical memory should remind us that the last successful gambit for a universal Muslim Renovatio was the Ottoman achievement. Remember the Ottomans were as much a European as a Muslim power — for 400 years — and their civilization was a blend of Byzantine and Levantine Islam. The closest Islam ever got to a complete and lasting Khilafat with universal promise was with the Ottoman Sultanate.

Which brings us to today’s Turkish Renovatio.

It has been sparked into a flare by the Mari Marmara incident. Suddenly Turkey has become a competitor in the stakes for a Muslim Renovatio. How could this be? What exactly are the stakes, and what is the practical framework through which a real Renovatio might be achieved?

The framework for restoration has been established, for better or worse, by the Israeli state. Israel has unwittingly shaped a framework for both Ummah narrative struggle and narrative fulfillment, by establishing a lighting rod for the unfolding of Muslim sacred story. Consider: the original lighting rods in Muslim memory are the twin despoiling invasions and occupations of the Dar al-Islam by Latin Crusaders and the Mongol Khanate. Together they nearly destroyed the Ummah.

But more important the ways in which Islam responded became the core of mythic story, and the foundation for the next great Renovatio. Indeed Muslim identity was forged in these struggles. Egypt and Syria only became majority Muslim societies during this period. In contemporary Muslim memory this was a time of heroes. It was the making of modern Islam. The Ottomans emerged at the end of this epoch, defeating the last surge of Latin-Hungarian crusading, and surviving the last Mongol surge of Timur.

So without reference to our historical vision, it was inevitable that Muslims would interpret the Israeli enterprise — especially since 1967 — as transcendental identity calling.

Hence championing the Palestinians becomes the vehicle for symbolic leadership in the Ummah — and thus is also at the heart of the current competition among aspiring leaders of a new Renovatio.

It is moreover a relatively “safe” arena for such symbolic competition — Again, thanks to Israel. The Israeli state has become the regional military superpower, by both conventional and nuclear yardsticks. Therefore it is unnecessary and impossible to mount a direct and dangerously classical military challenge.

This is strategically liberating. Israel has in effect created a secure umbrella in which competitors for Renovatio-leadership can contest and prove their worthiness without real material harm to their societies. Instead Israel itself assigns the true signs of heroic worthiness to lead.

The new dynamic is about provoking the “Crusader” (where Israel is the Crusader and the US the Mongol superpower) to do evil. Sacrificing to stand up to evil — to willingly martyr oneself — thus becomes the essence of leadership worthiness.

Hence Hamas — in the story it spins — provokes Israel in the most ritualized fashion, drawing down Cast Lead to show its worthiness in contrast to the pusillanimous, comprador Fatah, puppets of the “Zionist Entity.”

Hence Hizbull’ah — in the story it spins — provokes Israel in the most ritualized fashion, drawing their invasion (Operation Grapes of Wrath) and in heroic, even ancestor-mythic resistance, proving Shi’a worthiness to lead.

But the contrast is equally damning for those who play nice with the US and Israel. While Hamas fighters died, so the narrative goes, Egyptian and Saudi rulers looked the other way. It is said that the Pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak, supports the Israeli blockade of Gaza as a way to buy US buy-off on deep dynastic hopes for his son, Gamal. So they say, if he does Israel’s bidding, Israel will put in a good word with Washington, and Gamal will get his Pschent double-crown.

Saudi Arabia is no less complicit, if a bit less visible a comprador. What have Saudi princes done for the Palestinians lately, especially for the open-air blockaded prison that is Gaza? Nothing. They talk a big line but they look increasingly like client princes too. The two big Sunni Arab states seem to have abdicated their place in the competition. Quite a contrast to bold Saudi intervention in Bosnia in the 1990s — then Wahhabism was on the frontlines, on an Islamist roll.

So bring on the Mavi Marmara. Now there is another state actor to compete with two non-state actors — Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood — and Shi’a Iran.

Turkey potentially upends the competition, and here is why:

Al Qaeda failed its essential Ghazi test. It failed to assert leadership among civilized communities — see Al Anbar — and it has marginalized itself, a process expertly encouraged by targeted US killing. The Al Qaeda franchise has plummeted since 9-11.

· Iran has used its stalking horse, Hizbull’ah, effectively, but Iran itself is fatally undermined by its own geriatric revolution. Its vision of an Islamic Republic is failing. Arguably its ability to posit a universal Renovatio is almost nil.

· The Egyptian and Saudi states have betrayed the heroic narrative framework established by Israel even as they have embraced “cooperation” with Israel: They have denied its key dynamic: That the supreme test for restoration leadership must be through martyrdom in championing the Palestinians. This denial will come to haunt them.

· The Muslim Brotherhood is a powerful factor for change within Islam, but it has chosen a subversive non-violent path much like 3rd century Christians. Their trajectory must thus be long-term. They may yet make it, but they are in no position to fully lead Islam today.

So what about Turkey? Turkey today is the inheritor of its own Ottoman tradition. Moreover a more Islamist Turkey pulls the nation away from the now-fading insular nationalism of Ataturk. A contemporary Turkey that is robustly part Western and also part Islamist in fact represents the most valuable model for the future Ummah — and especially for its Arab-Urdu core.

Enough time has passed now that old Arab-Turkish scores should have receded, just as they have recently among Turks and Greeks. The Mavi Marmara incident — if followed up strongly and unrelentingly — can assert a neo-Ottoman claim to symbolic leadership of an emerging Muslim Renovatio.

Such a restoration would unfold in ritual terms. But is that not the point — the point that the US and Israel stubbornly refuse to see? The whole design of the fabled Khilafat was in reality always that of a Muslim Commonwealth, not of a unitary state (save for Al Qaeda fantasists). Renovatio means a restoration of collective identity and purpose. But it also requires a leader: A Champion who will right wrongs and bring Islam back to the glory of the “Rightly Guided.” Not as political order but as renewed collective consciousness.

It is supreme irony that (after a decade!) we cannot see what lies before our very eyes, or that those who hate Islam most will be the agent of their next deliverance.

Israel stepped on it. By boarding the Turkish ferry, our allies were, as they so often are: righteous but heavy-handed and self-defeating. They had a sane objective but were caught looking like a bully and an outlaw state. The Israeli Defense Forces --- the one-note Johnny of Israeli policy --- thought that they were conducting a daring security inspection, but blundered into a Palestinian-directed morality play, an information operation where Israel played the fool. If the Turkish ferry had a band on deck, it would have been playing "Send in the Clowns." To top it off, who owned the ferry? None other thanTurkey, usually a friend of Israel, and most Westerners' favorite Muslim country. Some pundits even asked in mock horror: should NATO invoke Article 5 to protect this NATO member? Even the films of the rowdy passengers beating the "slow roping" commandos couldn't help.

Hamas won, 20 to zip. But it gets worse. There are dozens of new stories about suffering in Gaza, which now has been laid at the feet of the porous blockade. Babies are hungry because of Israel, if you would believe the press and the NGOs. Today, Tehran was able to play the tough guy, offering to use their mosquito fleet to escort NGO aid vessels. The U.S. again gets a lesson in the realpolitik: any friend of Israel has one hand tied behind its back in the region. Distancing the US from Israel's Gaza policy will no doubt have many adherents in the White House, and who can blame them? In the meantime, the mullahcrats in Tehran are declaring a holiday. Their nuclear weapons program and murder of their own dissidents have disappeared from the media. This may have been Israel's worse mistake since 2006, but then again, there is so much competition for that distinction. You are losing us, Mr. Netanyahu!

I trust that this discussion will be straight from the shoulder. The stakes permit nothing less. The entire American position in the Greater Middle East, already shaky, risks lapsing into farce and failure. No amount of special pleading and spin can gainsay that harsh truth. Beyond that, our integrity as a nation and our ability to exercise the immense responsibilities that we carry abroad are endangered.

Obama’s behavior on the Gaza flotilla hardly deserves the label policy, much less strategy. It signals an utter lack of coherence – intellectual, diplomatic or ethical. Its fecklessness raises the question of whether our leaders have the seriousness to be stewards of the nation’s foreign relations. That sad state of affairs is suggested by the absence of a modicum of honesty about what was done and why. Indeed, it suggests that our leaders are not being honest with themselves. Are we to take seriously the declaration of Hillary Clinton that an Israeli inquiry (with or without international observers) meets the criterion of ‘impartiality’ laid down at the UNSC? Are we to take seriously Robert Gibb’s repeated glib assertion that the White House sees no damage to its standing and influence in the Middle East stemming from this affair? Are we to take seriously the remarks of self-avowed Christian Zionist Joe Biden in London (unreported in the U.S. press – out of embarrassment, one hopes?): “So what’s the big deal here?” Guardian June 1

Only within the cloistered precincts of Washington are these absurdities treated at face value. It is bad enough that the White House expresses contempt for decent opinion; it also seems to think that the people of the Middle East are fools. This after having rings run around us by Musharraf, Maliki, and Karzai. Finally, if we are serious about contributing to a stable peace in the region, the man with whom we should be working is Erdogan – not our aged retainer Hosni Mubarak.

I try to put in context what we have been doing in the following mini-essay

UR IMPERIALISM

Imperialism is a state of mind as much as it is a structure of domination. That truth is central to understanding the attitude of those who presume to impose their will on others, to run the affairs of alien people, to superintend what they may do and what they may not do. Thinking in this way of the varied phenomena that we label imperialism helps to clarify what they share and where they diverge. It allows making finer grained discriminations that are especially valuable when analyzing the recent behavior of the United States. For its serial interventions do not fit comfortably into categories borrowed from the past. America's self decreed spheres of domination do not constitute another Roman empire, a British Empire, a Russian Empire or in fact anything the world has seen before. Yet it does share with imperial powers of another day certain features. They are most pronounced in the mindset that is permissive of actions directed at taking charge of others without their approval.

1 A strong sense of superiority is the bedrock of the imperial mindset. It enables and it justifies imposing oneself on others. The ingredients of superiority are physical, political and moral. Psychologically, they reinforce each other. They also are fungible - to varying degrees.
Military prowess, in making the practical tasks easier, feeds the ‘we are better” syndrome while emboldening the nation to pursue audacious ambition. Being able to do something shifts the balance in judging whether we ought to do it. For it promises to confer success. Political superiority manifests itself in two ways: as the factor that makes possible the projection of military power, and in the conviction that “we” can actually improve the life of the natives by providing them with the order and ‘enlightened’ institutions of which they themselves are incapable. That incapacity is manifest in their initial inability to resist us and, these days, in the conditions that allow things to happen that vex us, e.g. terrorists to plot attacks, drug dealers to operate, or pirates to raid.
Moral superiority is integral to the mix, especially for those who prize their self designated virtue – and see themselves as having a selfless interest in promoting it in other lands. These days that is a critical element. It has been true to a lesser extent since the enlightenment – thus France’s ‘mission civilisatrice’ and Britain’s vain belief in advancing the cause of progress on all fronts. A keen sense of being a ‘good’ people concerned about uplifting others salves consciences, erases doubts and permits using dubious means to accomplish virtuous ends. This self serving perspective paves the way of course for the routinization of hypocrisy.

2. For the imperial mind, the immediate reason for intervention can be insignificant relative to the response. The incident stimulates what is a strong predisposition. In some instances, it serves merely as an excuse: “Remember the Maine,” the Bey of Algiers’ flyswatter that brushed the face of the French envoy; a Chinese governor’s crackdown on opium trafficking; the phantom Tonkin Gulf attack; Saddam’s foot-dragging about allowing United Nations’ unimpeded access to all Iraqi facilities. At other times, there may be a serious provocation, 9/11 triggering the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. In all these instances, the imperial actor is already programmed to act aggressively and to disregard possible ensuing complications – diplomatic or military.

3. The imperial mindset is comfortable with taking charge of other peoples. Doing so is not felt as odd or improper. Controlling and giving direction to the natives is, in fact, praiseworthy insofar as it carries the promise of improving things for them, as well as for oneself. Imperialist thinking arrogates to itself the right to make that judgment according to its own lights. The decision to intervene is that nation’s alone. It requires no higher authority since none is recognized or deemed qualified. Good intentions create their own legitimacy. These days, there is some sensitivity to legitimacy. So it is desirable to have partners who serve as auxiliaries to the enterprise. Their presence masks the truth of it being in essence a unilateral action. The formal laying on of hands by a collective security organization has practical advantages, too, even if it comes after the fact. But the ‘world community’ in any guise has no rightful place in making key determinations. Ur imperialists know best, and know that they know best.
Similarly, it is unnecessary to get the prior approval of the people being subjugated. After all, if they both knew what their own enlightened interests were and were free to express them, the occasion for the intervention would not have arisen. Dictatorships, especially hostile ones, lower the threshold for intervention since they are seen as preventing the latter condition from being met. Post hoc approval by the natives is inferred from their participation in whatever governing mechanisms are put in place; even acquiescence is interpreted as confirming the occupier’s righteousness and as bestowing legitimacy.


4. An absence of empathy for the locals and a consonant dulling of sensibilities about the duress they experience is integral to the imperial personality. Cultural knowledge is sought only on instrumental terms. It is extracted and processed as just another kind of information. To develop an understanding of the natives sufficient to allow for identification with them is to threaten the innate feelings of superiority and perhaps to heighten the awareness of being an alien intruder. That is why, nowadays, there is a preference for using native interpreters and home-grown experts as tag-ons in performing occupation missions.
Lack of cultural preparation may also can be represented as a sign that there is no intention of being a long-term occupier. A sign to the locals, to outside parties and to whomever looks askance as declarations of no imperial purpose.
In addition, containing empathy is a way of avoiding inhibition about the use of violence. For it allows for a degree of depersonalization of the civilian casualties that are an inescapable accompaniment to military action. Guilt and inhibition about committing unsavory acts are muted when dealing with a depersonalized ‘them’ rather than persons whose character and individuality emerges from a known socio-cultural context.

5. The imperial state of mind is strengthened by being a collective phenomenon. Emotions play a bigger role than does deliberate thought. This is particularly important in countries where invasion and occupation go against the grain of national self-image. A threshold of initial intensity must be crossed to fuel passions that can override habit and inhibition. 9/11 did exactly that. By providing both motivation and a blanket justification for whatever is done, the imperial mindset can grow and sustain itself whatever happens ‘out there.’ Emotions of this kind have the further effect of silencing and/or ignoring critics who may bring to the fore uncomfortable facts. In other words, group think and implicit group censorship go hand-in-hand.
Selective perception thereby becomes a constant in the imperial mind set.

6. ‘Imperial’ behavior generates momentum that is as much mental as it is political or organizational. One gets accustomed to doing certain things that may have seemed disagreeable if not unnatural at the outset. The second and third times become instinctively easier. This holds even where the first intervention/occupation has been anything but an unalloyed success. The accommodating attitudes become routinized as inertia of all kinds carries the process forward. The imperial mentality feeds on itself just as one intervention creates a military cum political dynamic that impels a nation towards subsequent interventions.

7. A companion feature of the imperial mentality is its susceptibility to
becoming prisoner of expectations. To set down the path of imposing oneself on others is to make a bet on success. For the stake is not only the stated objective but all that has been invested in the project. Beyond resources - human, financial, diplomatic –there is collective self esteem. There is the collectivity’s sense of moral worth. This last figures prominently in the mentality of a liberal democratic society that cultivates the idea of its intrinsic virtue. To come up short (much less fail outright) is bad enough. To make hostage to that failure something that one supposedly cherishes is to court a crisis of self doubt and plunging morale. Paradoxically, plowing ahead can put off that day of reckoning by keeping regrets at bay– for a time. This is so even where the ultimate consequences are more painful.

8. The imperial personality is highly judgmental. It is free and easy with criticism of the natives. The typical mode of address is to instruct, to lecture, to correct, to remonstrate, to scold and, if necessary, to coerce. The underlying sense of superiority means that if something goes badly, then ‘they’ have to be at fault – for one reason or another. To admit error, much less to apologize for it, is to undercut that image of superiority. Giving oneself license to treat the natives as subordinates is a way of defending the core premise that I have a right to take custody of you. Acceptance of equality on any plane is incompatible with the imperial mindset. Hence the importance placed on segregated, self contained residential compounds.

9. Rebellion against invasion/occupation is neither authentic more valid to the imperialist mind. It is be denounced and repressed. The more serious the rebellion, the stronger the impulse to cast its members as evil-doers. This line of thinking/feeling flows from the justification for the intervention relied on in the first place. To acknowledge that rebels have any fair reason to turn on their occupiers is to call into question the legitimacy of what the superior party is doing.

Moreover, rejection is labeled ungrateful. This reaction is in direct proportion to the extent to which the occupation is described as benevolent and in the best interest of the natives. That explains why the charge of ingratitude is so heavily freighted these days. It is not an entirely novel phenomenon, as a perusal of the graphic portraits drawn of diabolical Sepoy rebels drawn in Punch and other British journals makes stunningly clear.

cheers

Imagine the circumstances reversed: what would Turkey do if Israelis supportive of the PKK set out to break Turkey's ability to prevent weapons being shipped to that terrorist organization? Or how about an even more incendiary example: Armenian activists creating a disturbance intended to draw attention to Turkish killing of Armenians in the early 20th century, provoke a reaction to make this Turkish government appear no different than the one that committed those killings. Would the Turkish government have permitted it to occur? Or overturned its policy in response, as Turkey is now demanding of Israel?

Israel's choices in the flotilla incident don't seem to me surprising -- it has a legitimate concern about weapons being shipped to Hamas in Gaza, had a policy in place of searching ships bound for Gaza, had warned the Turkish government it would intercept the ships, had offered to deliver the aid once it had been searched. The interdiction of the ships may have been clumsy, but was not a departure from expected Israeli behavior.

The choices of the Erdogan government and the Turkish "street" are much more interesting for what they say about the way Turkey is changing. The AKP has successfully maneuvered the military out of its traditional role as "protector of the state" and embarked on a "multidimensional foreign policy" that includes a "full-scale strategic partnership with Russia" and voting against IAEA sanction of the Iranian nuclear program.

Turkey is no longer a reliable ally of the United States, but then it hasn't been since before 2003. Turkey's denial of access to its territory for the invasion of Iraq illustrated where democratic Turkey was headed. Anti-Bush sentiment elsewhere masked the effect. Turkey has already re-positioned itself; we're just now noticing.

The question as posed, I think is missing the mark on the most critical issue: Why are we are losing Turkey? That question may soon be supplanted by even more alarming question—Who lost Turkey? Not since “Truman lost China,” has a Democratic administration been at such great risk of being blindsided by such a significant cataclysmic geo-strategic reversal. No matter whose side you are in the flotilla debacle—you have to admit 1) It could not have happened with enabling by Turkey; 2) It was a set-up to cast Israel in the most negative manner possible.

There is an awful lot of smoke from the smoking gun. The Washington Post which was highly critical of the Israeli response noted on its June 5 editorial page All of the violence occurred aboard the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, and all of those killed were members or volunteers of the Islamic ‘charity’ that owned the ship, Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).” It is well known that the foundation is part of the “Union of Good,” a front organization for Hamas, a group that has both attacked Israel and been listed by the US State Department as a terrorist group. Furthermore, according to the June 3 NY Post “The passengers reportedly included 100-plus members of various Muslim Brotherhood chapters, at least 20 of whom taped al Qaeda-style "martyr" videos before embarking.”

Turkey not only knowing allowed the confrontation to be organized from Turkish soil, it did everything possible to exploit the incident. The Turkish Foreign Minister declared, “this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey.”

This is the same government that has turned a blind eye to the crushing of independent voices in Iran and has moved to block sanctions intended to deter Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

For many years the United States took Turkey for granted—a solid member of NATO; constantly knocking on the door for EU membership; proudly secular governance. Those days are in the past.

This administration could well lose Turkey. The consequences of that are pretty not pretty. Phased and adaptive missile defense will be less of both without Turkish cooperation. Iran will be more unbound. Israel will feel more isolated. NATO will be further weakened.

In many ways the flotilla incident has made US Middle East policy look inept, but what it says about losing Turkey may be one of the most alarming warning signs of how really bad Washington is doing.

The fatal interception of the Gaza-bound flotilla is only the latest incident in a self-damaging Israeli course that constitutes one large, continuing strategic blunder. That course involves taking the most narrow and rigid view of current perceived threats, thereby ensuring that they will never evolve into anything other than threats. It entails always relying on the most direct and forceful policy tools—mostly meaning military force—with an apparent blindness to other tools and tactics that would be more in Israel’s own long-term interests. It involves pursuing absolute security for Israelis even if that means absolute insecurity for others. It perpetuates a situation on the ground, amid conflicting claims of Israelis and Palestinians to some of the same land, that bears no resemblance to what would be an impartial way of managing such a conflict but instead simply reflects Israeli military superiority. It is virtually indistinguishable from a doctrine that might makes right.

The shortsightedness of this course is breathtaking. It is based on the mistaken belief that the aspirations, fears, and resentments of others can be bludgeoned into irrelevance. It means that Israelis, a people who have had good reason to see themselves as beleaguered, will be ever more beleaguered. It means that the same people, who can count few friends around the world, will have even fewer friends. It means they will be assured enemies—angry, motivated enemies—in perpetuity. It means all the costs and consequences of maintaining a garrison state will also continue in perpetuity. And it means a compromise of some of the estimable values that earlier were associated with the Zionist movement.

Of course Israel had a choice in this latest incident. It could end the blockade, which has less to do with intercepting rockets and more to do—much more, given the way the blockade has been implemented—with making life for the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip miserable enough that they would, it was hoped, turn against Hamas. The supposed connection between Hamas military capabilities and most of the items, from clothing to coriander, whose movement into the Gaza Strip Israel has impeded or blocked altogether is laughable. The blockade has been part of a one-two punch against the economy and welfare of Gazans. In Operation Cast Lead a year and a half ago, the Israeli military damaged or destroyed thousands of residences as well as a large proportion of businesses and schools in the Strip. Now with the shipment of cement and other construction materials blocked, any reconstruction is limited to what residents can piece together from the rubble. Part of the Israeli strategy has been to sharpen the contrast between squalor in Gaza and better living conditions in the more favored (for now) West Bank nominally governed by what is left of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. The strategy has not worked. Although Gazans have directed blame for their plight in several directions, including both Hamas and Israel, Hamas is still firmly in place.

This episode can only hurt efforts to gain support for a new round of sanctions against Iran. It increases international attention to the Israeli treatment of Gaza, which gives a bad name to any kind of sanctions or interdiction that affects ordinary citizens of a target country. It gives an added reason for many not to line up on the same side of an issue as Israel in an effort that, if successful, would maintain Israel’s nuclear weapons monopoly in the Middle East. The incident also is a public relations gift to Iran in diverting attention from a critical IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear program and from the coming one-year anniversary of the disputed Iranian presidential election.

The severe damage to what had been a good relationship between Israel and Turkey (a relationship already badly damaged by Operation Cast Lead) illustrates probably better than anything else the self-destructive side of Israeli policy. Given Turkey’s intrinsic importance and especially its growing role in the Middle East, this relationship was a valuable asset for Israel—but is now squandered. As for U.S.-Turkish relations, the United States can and must make it clear that its interests regarding this incident are no more in line with Israel’s than with Turkey’s—including the nationality of a dual U.S.-Turkish citizen who was one of the fatalities.

The damage to Israeli-Turkish relations is not the only instance of Israel’s larger self-damaging course causing it to lose friends and miss opportunities for cooperation and support from others in the region. There is so much to admire in Israel and so much to learn, by Arabs and other Middle Easterners, from the Israeli people, who have made the desert bloom. The usual pointing out by Israel, accurately, of missed opportunities and misguided leadership on the Arab side does not negate the wounds that Israel itself has needlessly inflicted on the opportunities for winning friends and influencing people in its neighborhood. Last week’s Economist has an article on Qatar that mentions the emir’s admiration for Israel, which underlay his allowing the Israelis to open a permanent trade mission in Qatar. The mission was closed during Operation Cast Lead. The emir has offered to reopen it if Israel allows construction materials back into the Gaza Strip; Netanyahu’s government has refused.

As for U.S. influence with Israel, the urging of “caution and restraint” in handling the Gaza flotilla can be put alongside the many equally feckless statements about construction of Israeli settlements on the West Bank being “not helpful”—statements by a United States that has not come anywhere close to exercising, on behalf of its own interests as well as the long-term interests of Israel, the potential influence that should come from the enormous support that Washington has given Israel for decades. U.S. interests suffer from incidents like the recent one involving the flotilla because, against that backdrop of huge support and feckless admonitions, the United States shares the opprobrium and political and diplomatic costs that such Israeli actions incur. Meanwhile, the United States has been functioning as an enabler of self-destructive Israeli behavior, rather like friends and family members who do nothing to steer an abuser of drugs or alcohol onto a more constructive path. As long as it functions that way, we cannot expect U.S. preferences to deflect the Israeli government from attacking Iran, an action that would inflict still more damage—major damage—to U.S. interests.

The flotilla attack demonstrated what everyone already knew: Israel sticks doggedly to a national security strategy which has deep support among the Israeli public, but which does not make it more secure.

Let's be frank about the attack: Israel was set up. Its opponents use the strategy often known as "insurgency." One of the oldest insurgent tricks in the book is to provoke the government into a reaction which is--or at least can be portrayed as--disproportional, thus undercutting its support and legitimacy. Insurgency is a quintessentially psychological mode of conflict were perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs matter more than physical actions.

The Israeli government had to know that there was a good chance, perhaps even a certainty, of something like this happening. Yet it acted any way. And it added fuel to the fire by its post attack strategic communications which indicated that it did absolutely nothing wrong or misguided. Why? Why did the Israeli government, which certainly understands the psychological complexity and traps of insurgency, and which knows the degree to which a small nation like Israel depends on external support, stumble into the ambush?

Certainly it cannot believe that its long standing strategy of firm actions, including the use of force, will actually deter its enemies or erode their will. Certainly it cannot believe that other nations will suddenly come to see the conflict from its perspective. Einstein defined insanity as, "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The Israeli government is not insane. It knew that actions like this did not have positive psychological effects in the past, and would not this time.

The only explanation is that the Israeli government chose to accept the adverse psychological effects of the raid because it knew that the Israeli public supports demonstrations of power against their nation's enemies.

Hence the conundrum. Such demonstrations of power help Israeli governments stay in power, yet have no chance of deterring Israel's enemies or winning it wider international support. This is the deepest and potentially most dangerous problem of any democracy acting strategically.

Israel thus has only two options. A government could emerge that was willing to undertake actions which were domestically unpopular but which might have advantageous psychological effects on Israel's enemies and opponents. This is unlikely. Most probably, Israel will simply continue with its domestically popular strategy even though it will entail mounting political costs, to potentially include economic isolation.

The decisive element, of course, it American support. If a number of Americans decide that Israeli strategy make the costs of the partnership greater than the benefits, Israel could be forced to revise its approach. This too, though, is unlikely. The most probably future is more of the same.