STANLEY KUBRICK made Dr Strangelove sixty years ago.
This black comedy is old enough to be filmed in black and white, but remains a compelling film because the characters seem to recur in real life: like Strangelove himself, the sinister adviser who pushes a horrible, heartless plan of war and death on a hapless president. Or General Ripper, the macho military man who goes a bit “funny in the head.” And, of course, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, representing the British, who flap about in a vague, posh way while being dragged along by U.S. military adventures.
It’s fairly common for U.S. presidents to have a “Strangelove” figure: many thought he was based on Henry Kissinger, who “Strangeloved” for successive presidents, although he was actually drawn from earlier characters including Cold War “intellectual” Herman Kahn.
President George “Dubya” Bush was so hapless that he had several “Strangelove” type figures to dream up the Iraq War, including Dick “shot his own best friend in the face” Cheney and Don “known unknowns” Rumsfeld.
Joe Biden has a kind of low-wattage Dr Strangelove figure, Brett McGurk, who helped persuade the president to back Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
McGurk was just a lawyer who got into U.S. politics by being a judicial clerk. He has no direct military experience, but he became a military adviser to George “Dubya” Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Biden, showing that the Strangelove-y military bureaucracy transcends supposed political divisions. Bombing foreigners is bipartisan in the States.
McGurk grew his career as a military bureaucrat via the Iraq war–that is to say he climbed a ladder of disasters, although it was Iraqis who suffered while he raised himself higher.
McGurk was a legal adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from 2004 on. The Coalition Provisional Authority was the colonial-style administration the U.S. imposed on Iraqis after “liberating” them from Saddam.
The “laws” McGurk advised on were frankly disgusting, like “Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17” which exempted all the U.S. and British mercenaries from any Iraqi laws, so they could kill without consequence.
Other laws gave the Authority a huge sum of Iraqi cash, known as the Development Fund for Iraq, or pushed privatisation so Western contractors could come and take over Iraqi services. These laws helped U.S. firms squeeze vast sums out of Iraq, while leaving the “liberated” population powerless.
McGurk then drafted Iraq’s “interim constitution” which used a “divide and rule” tactic of institutionalising sectarian Shia-Sunni splits into Iraqi politics. This exacerbated a violent civil war, leading to many deaths, but the U.S. thought this a price worth paying: As long as Iraqis didn’t unite against the U.S. occupier, they were happy.
McGurk was then one of the advisers behind the 2007 “Surge,” one last attempt to flood Iraq with more U.S. troops to try control the multiple insurgencies faced by the occupation-backed government.
Many U.S. politicians patted themselves on the back claiming the Surge “stabilised” Iraq, but the continued attempt to shape Iraq with U.S. firepower rather than handing over actual power to Iraq’s own people just led to new, and more nihilistic reactions in the region, like Isis.
McGurk’s career was formed by the failures in Iraq, as the U.S. tried to impose its will on Iraq’s people. He was part of repeated attempts to try shape the country by U.S. firepower in favour of U.S. corporations, leading to years of chaos and bloodshed.
So it is no surprise that as Biden’s “ National Security Council co-ordinator for the Middle East and North Africa,” he is backing Israel’s attempts to impose its will on the Palestinian, and now Lebanese, people using U.S.-supplied firepower.
I think understanding McGurk’s role will also help clear up a fairly common misunderstanding about the U.S. relationship with Israel.
McGurk’s general advice is that Biden should rely on “partnerships” in the Middle East, both with Israel and with authoritarian regimes including Saudi Arabia and Egypt: the U.S. is not always strong enough to permanently “project power” into the region–as the Iraq war ultimately showed.
So instead it must rely on local strong powers and “regional strong men.” Broadly speaking, the United States wants to press down their main regional challenger, Iran, and make sure the people of the “Arab Street” don’t give them a load of trouble.
So the U.S. does deals with, sells (or gives) arms to, and occasionally sends U.S. fighter planes to support, their “partners” in the region–which could be Saudi, or Egypt or Israel.
It is for this reason McGurk reportedly privately told Israel that the U.S. would support Israel’s missile attacks and invasion of Lebanon against Hezbollah targets: the U.S. is enthusiastic about Israel going to war with a group they see as a proxy for the U.S. regional enemy, Iran.
At the same time, McGurk has been promoting a “peace deal” for Gaza, where Israel joins up with the Saudis to impose a peace on the Palestinians, one where the war ends and the Palestinians get a sort of well-funded “reconstruction” but settle for a subordinate territory under heavy Saudi-Israeli influence.
The former, the war in Lebanon, is happening. The latter might be a bit of a U.S. pipe dream.
But what this does show is the U.S. is genuinely enthusiastic about Israel fighting their joint enemies–“Iran and Iranian proxies”–but is not super happy about Israel killing loads of Palestinians; although they can definitely put up with it, or might even cynically hope the IDF “gets it done sooner rather than later.”
Many on the left think Israel has lobbied and pushed the U.S. political system to the point where Israel has “captured” the U.S. And while this lobbying is real, the bigger truth is that the U.S. political establishment really sees Israel as a kind of “regional strongman,” a cat’s paw they can rely on to fight their perceived enemies.
The deal is that the U.S. arms Israel to do the US’s bidding, rather than because the U.S. is doing Israel’s bidding.