| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 10:15 pm Post subject: The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties |
| A Rose By Another Other Name
The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties
by KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
former CIA political analysts
Since the long-forgotten days when the State Department's Middle
East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, U.S. policy on
Israel and the Arab world has increasingly become the purview of
officials well known for tilting toward Israel. From the 1920s
roughly to 1990, Arabists, who had a personal history and an
educational background in the Arab world and were accused by
supporters of Israel of being totally biased toward Arab interests,
held sway at the State Department and, despite having limited power
in the policymaking circles of any administration, helped maintain
some semblance of U.S. balance by keeping policy from tipping over
totally toward Israel. But Arabists have been steadily replaced by
their exact opposites, what some observers are calling Israelists,
and policymaking circles throughout government now no longer even
make a pretense of exhibiting balance between Israeli and Arab,
particularly Palestinian, interests.
In the Clinton administration, the three most senior State
Department officials dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli peace
process were all partisans of Israel to one degree or another. All
had lived at least for brief periods in Israel and maintained ties
with Israel while in office, occasionally vacationing there. One of
these officials had worked both as a pro-Israel lobbyist and as
director of a pro-Israel think tank in Washington before taking a
position in the Clinton administration from which he helped make
policy on Palestinian-Israeli issues. Another has headed the pro-
Israel think tank since leaving government.
The link between active promoters of Israeli interests and
policymaking circles is stronger by several orders of magnitude in
the Bush administration, which is peppered with people who have long
records of activism on behalf of Israel in the United States, of
policy advocacy in Israel, and of promoting an agenda for Israel
often at odds with existing U.S. policy. These people, who can
fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of
government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the
deputy secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the
National Security Council staff and in the vice president's office.
We still tiptoe around putting a name to this phenomenon. We write
articles about the neo-conservatives' agenda on U.S.-Israeli
relations and imply that in the neo-con universe there is little
light between the two countries. We talk openly about the Israeli
bias in the U.S. media. We make wry jokes about Congress
being "Israeli-occupied territory." Jason Vest in The Nation
magazine reported forthrightly that some of the think tanks that
hold sway over Bush administration thinking see no difference
between U.S. and Israeli national security interests. But we never
pronounce the particular words that best describe the real meaning
of those observations and wry remarks. It's time, however, that we
say the words out loud and deal with what they really signify.
Dual loyalties. The issue we are dealing with in the Bush
administration is dual loyalties-the double allegiance of those
myriad officials at high and middle levels who cannot distinguish
U.S. interests from Israeli interests, who baldly promote the
supposed identity of interests between the United States and Israel,
who spent their early careers giving policy advice to right-wing
Israeli governments and now give the identical advice to a right-
wing U.S. government, and who, one suspects, are so wrapped up in
their concern for the fate of Israel that they honestly do not know
whether their own passion about advancing the U.S. imperium is
motivated primarily by America-first patriotism or is governed first
and foremost by a desire to secure Israel's safety and predominance
in the Middle East through the advancement of the U.S. imperium.
"Dual loyalties" has always been one of those red flags posted
around the subject of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict,
something that induces horrified gasps and rapid heartbeats because
of its implication of Jewish disloyalty to the United States and the
common assumption that anyone who would speak such a canard is ipso
facto an anti-Semite. (We have a Jewish friend who is not bothered
by the term in the least, who believes that U.S. and Israeli
interests should be identical and sees it as perfectly natural for
American Jews to feel as much loyalty to Israel as they do to the
United States. But this is clearly not the usual reaction when the
subject of dual loyalties arises.)
Although much has been written about the neo-cons who dot the Bush
administration, the treatment of the their ties to Israel has
generally been very gingerly. Although much has come to light
recently about the fact that ridding Iraq both of its leader and of
its weapons inventory has been on the neo-con agenda since long
before there was a Bush administration, little has been said about
the link between this goal and the neo-cons' overriding desire to
provide greater security for Israel. But an examination of the cast
of characters in Bush administration policymaking circles reveals a
startlingly pervasive network of pro-Israel activists, and an
examination of the neo-cons' voluminous written record shows that
Israel comes up constantly as a neo-con reference point, always
mentioned with the United States as the beneficiary of a recommended
policy, always linked with the United States when national interests
are at issue.
The Begats
First to the cast of characters. Beneath cabinet level, the list of
pro-Israel neo-cons who are either policy functionaries themselves
or advise policymakers from perches just on the edges of government
reads like the old biblical "begats." Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz leads the pack. He was a prot�g� of Richard
Perle,
who heads the prominent Pentagon advisory body, the Defense Policy
Board. Many of today's neo-cons, including Perle, are the
intellectual progeny of the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a
strong defense hawk and one of Israel's most strident congressional
supporters in the 1970s.
Wolfowitz in turn is the mentor of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice
President Cheney's chief of staff who was first a student of
Wolfowitz and later a subordinate during the 1980s in both the State
and the Defense Departments. Another Perle prot�g� is Douglas
Feith,
who is currently undersecretary of defense for policy, the
department's number-three man, and has worked closely with Perle
both as a lobbyist for Turkey and in co-authoring strategy papers
for right-wing Israeli governments. Assistant Secretaries Peter
Rodman and Dov Zachkeim, old hands from the Reagan administration
when the neo-cons first flourished, fill out the subcabinet ranks at
Defense. At lower levels, the Israel and the Syria/Lebanon desk
officers at Defense are imports from the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, a think tank spun off from the pro-Israel lobby
organization, AIPAC.
Neo-cons have not made many inroads at the State Department, except
for John Bolton, an American Enterprise Institute hawk and Israeli
proponent who is said to have been forced on a reluctant Colin
Powell as undersecretary for arms control. Bolton's special
assistant is David Wurmser, who wrote and/or co-authored with Perle
and Feith at least two strategy papers for Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu in 1996. Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser, is a co-founder
of the media-watch website MEMRI (Middle East Media Research
Institute), which is run by retired Israeli military and
intelligence officers and specializes in translating and widely
circulating Arab media and statements by Arab leaders. A recent
investigation by the Guardian of London found that MEMRI's
translations are skewed by being highly selective. Although it
inevitably translates and circulates the most extreme of Arab
statements, it ignores moderate Arab commentary and extremist Hebrew
statements.
In the vice president's office, Cheney has established his own
personal national security staff, run by aides known to be very pro-
Israel. The deputy director of the staff, John Hannah, is a former
fellow of the Israeli-oriented Washington Institute. On the National
Security Council staff, the newly appointed director of Middle East
affairs is Elliott Abrams, who came to prominence after pleading
guilty to withholding information from Congress during the Iran-
contra scandal (and was pardoned by President Bush the elder) and
who has long been a vocal proponent of right-wing Israeli positions.
Putting him in a key policymaking position on the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict is like entrusting the henhouse to a fox.
Pro-Israel activists with close links to the administration are also
busy in the information arena inside and outside government. The
head of Radio Liberty, a Cold War propaganda holdover now converted
to service in the "war on terror," is Thomas Dine, who was the very
active head of AIPAC throughout most of the Reagan and the Bush-41
administrations. Elsewhere on the periphery, William Kristol, son of
neo-con originals Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb, is closely
linked to the administration's pro-Israel coterie and serves as its
cheerleader through the Rupert Murdoch-owned magazine that he edits,
The Weekly Standard. Some of Bush's speechwriters � including
David
Frum, who coined the term "axis of evil" for Bush's state-of-the-
union address but was forced to resign when his wife publicly
bragged about his linguistic prowess � have come from The Weekly
Standard. Frank Gaffney, another Jackson and Perle prot�g� and
Reagan administration defense official, puts his pro-Israel oar in
from his think tank, the Center for Security Policy, and through
frequent media appearances and regular columns in the Washington
Times.
The incestuous nature of the proliferating boards and think tanks,
whose membership lists are more or less identical and totally
interchangeable, is frighteningly insidious. Several scholars at the
American Enterprise Institute, including former Reagan UN ambassador
and long-time supporter of the Israeli right wing Jeane Kirkpatrick,
make their pro-Israel views known vocally from the sidelines and
occupy positions on other boards. Probably the most important
organization, in terms of its influence on Bush administration
policy formulation, is the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA). Formed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war specifically
to bring Israel's security concerns to the attention of U.S.
policymakers and concentrating also on broad defense issues, the
extremely hawkish, right-wing JINSA has always had a high-powered
board able to place its members inside conservative U.S.
administrations. Cheney, Bolton, and Feith were members until they
entered the Bush administration. Several lower level JINSA
functionaries are now working in the Defense Department. Perle is
still a member, as are Kirkpatrick, former CIA director and leading
Iraq-war hawk James Woolsey, and old-time rabid pro-Israel types
like Eugene Rostow and Michael Ledeen. Both JINSA and Gaffney's
Center for Security Policy are heavily underwritten by Irving
Moskowitz, a right-wing American Zionist, California business
magnate (his money comes from bingo parlors), and JINSA board member
who has lavishly financed the establishment of several religious
settlements in Arab East Jerusalem.
By Their Own Testimony
Most of the neo-cons now in government have left a long paper trail
giving clear evidence of their fervently right-wing pro-Israel, and
fervently anti-Palestinian, sentiments. Whether being pro-Israel,
even pro right-wing Israel, constitutes having dual loyalties �
that
is, a desire to further Israel's interests that equals or exceeds
the desire to further U.S. interests � is obviously not easy to
determine, but the record gives some clues.
Wolfowitz himself has been circumspect in public, writing primarily
about broader strategic issues rather than about Israel specifically
or even the Middle East, but it is clear that at bottom Israel is a
major interest and may be the principal reason for his near
obsession with the effort, of which he is the primary spearhead, to
dump Saddam Hussein, remake the Iraqi government in an American
image, and then further redraw the Middle East map by accomplishing
the same goals in Syria, Iran, and perhaps other countries. Profiles
of Wolfowitz paint him as having two distinct aspects: one
obessively bent on advancing U.S. dominance throughout the world,
ruthless and uncompromising, seriously prepared to "end states," as
he once put it, that support terrorism in any way, a velociraptor in
the words of one former colleague cited in the Economist; the other
a softer aspect, which shows him to be a soft-spoken political
moralist, an ardent democrat, even a bleeding heart on social
issues, and desirous for purely moral and humanitarian reasons of
modernizing and democratizing the Islamic world.
But his interest in Israel always crops up. Even profiles that
downplay his attachment to Israel nonetheless always mention the
influence the Holocaust, in which several of his family perished,
has had on his thinking. One source inside the administration has
described him frankly as "over-the-top crazy when it comes to
Israel." Although this probably accurately describes most of the
rest of the neo-con coterie, and Wolfowitz is guilty at least by
association, he is actually more complex and nuanced than this. A
recent New York Times Magazine profile by the Times' Bill Keller
cites critics who say that "Israel exercises a powerful
gravitational pull on the man" and notes that as a teenager
Wolfowitz lived in Israel during his mathematician father's
sabbatical semester there. His sister is married to an Israeli.
Keller even somewhat reluctantly acknowledges the accuracy of one
characterization of Wolfowitz as "Israel-centric." But Keller goes
through considerable contortions to shun what he calls "the
offensive suggestion of dual loyalty" and in the process makes one
wonder if he is protesting too much. Keller concludes that Wolfowitz
is less animated by the security of Israel than by the promise of a
more moderate Islam. He cites as evidence Wolfowitz's admiration for
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel and also
draws on a former Wolfowitz subordinate who says that "as a moral
man, he might have found Israel the heart of the Middle East story.
But as a policy maker, Turkey and the gulf and Egypt didn't loom any
less large for him."
These remarks are revealing. Anyone not so fearful of broaching the
issue of dual loyalties might at least have raised the suggestion
that Wolfowitz's real concern may indeed be to ensure Israel's
security. Otherwise, why do his overriding interests seem to be
reinventing Anwar Sadats throughout the Middle East by transforming
the Arab and Muslim worlds and thereby making life safer for Israel,
and a passion for fighting a pre-emptive war against Iraq � when
there are critical areas totally apart from the Middle East and
myriad other broad strategic issues that any deputy secretary of
defense should be thinking about just as much? His current interest
in Turkey, which is shared by the other neo-cons, some of whom have
served as lobbyists for Turkey, seems also to be directed at
securing Israel's place in the region; there seems little reason for
particular interest in this moderate Islamic, non-Arab country,
other than that it is a moderate Islamic but non-Arab neighbor of
Israel.
Furthermore, the notion suggested by the Wolfowitz subordinate that
any moral man would obviously look to Israel as the "heart of the
Middle East story" is itself an Israel-centered idea: the assumption
that Israel is a moral state, always pursuing moral policies, and
that any moral person would naturally attach himself to Israel
automatically presumes that there is an identity of interests
between the United States and Israel; only those who assume such a
complete coincidence of interests accept the notion that Israel is,
across the board, a moral state.
Others among the neo-con policymakers have been more direct and open
in expressing their pro-Israel views. Douglas Feith has been the
most prolific of the group, with a two-decade-long record of policy
papers, many co-authored with Perle, propounding a strongly anti-
Palestinian, pro-Likud view. He views the Palestinians as not
constituting a legitimate national group, believes that the West
Bank and Gaza belong to Israel by right, and has long advocated that
the U.S. abandon any mediating effort altogether and particularly
foreswear the land-for-peace formula.
In 1996, Feith, Perle, and both David and Meyrav Wurmser were among
the authors of a policy paper issued by an Israeli think tank and
written for newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that
urged Israel to make a "clean break" from pursuit of the peace
process, particularly its land-for-peace aspects, which the authors
regarded as a prescription for Israel's annihilation. Arabs must
rather accept a "peace-for-peace" formula through unconditional
acceptance of Israel's rights, including its territorial rights in
the occupied territories. The paper advocated that Israel "engage
every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism" by disengaging from
economic and political dependence on the U.S. while maintaining a
more "mature," self-reliant partnership with the U.S. not
focused "narrowly on territorial disputes." Greater self-reliance
would, these freelance policymakers told Netanyahu, give
Israel "greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of
pressure [i.e., U.S. pressure] used against it in the past."
The paper advocated, even as far back as 1996, containment of the
threat against Israel by working closely with � guess who? �
Turkey,
as well as with Jordan, apparently regarded as the only reliably
moderate Arab regime. Jordan had become attractive for these
strategists because it was at the time working with opposition
elements in Iraq to reestablish a Hashemite monarchy there that
would have been allied by blood lines and political leanings to the
Hashemite throne in Jordan. The paper's authors saw the principal
threat to Israel coming, we should not be surprised to discover now,
from Iraq and Syria and advised that focusing on the removal of
Saddam Hussein would kill two birds with one stone by also thwarting
Syria's regional ambitions. In what amounts to a prelude to the neo-
cons' principal policy thrust in the Bush administration, the paper
spoke frankly of Israel's interest in overturning the Iraqi
leadership and replacing it with a malleable monarchy. Referring to
Saddam Hussein's ouster as "an important Israeli strategic
objective," the paper observed that "Iraq's future could affect the
strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly" � meaning give
Israel unquestioned predominance in the region. The authors urged
therefore that Israel support the Hashemites in their "efforts to
redefine Iraq."
In a much longer policy document written at about the same time for
the same Israeli think tank, David Wurmser repeatedly linked the
U.S. and Israel when talking about national interests in the Middle
East. The "battle to dominate and define Iraq," he wrote "is, by
extension, the battle to dominate the balance of power in the Levant
over the long run," and "the United States and Israel" can fight
this battle together. Repeated references to U.S. and Israeli
strategic policy, pitted against a "Saudi-Iraqi-Syrian-Iranian-PLO
axis," and to strategic moves that establish a balance of power in
which the United States and Israel are ascendant, in alliance with
Turkey and Jordan, betray a thought process that cannot separate
U.S. from Israeli interests.
Perle gave further impetus to this thrust when six years later, in
September 2002, he gave a briefing for Pentagon officials that
included a slide depicting a recommended strategic goal for the U.S.
in the Middle East: all of Palestine as Israel, Jordan as Palestine,
and Iraq as the Hashemite kingdom. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld
seems to have taken this aboard, since he spoke at about the same
time of the West Bank and Gaza as the "so-called occupied
territories" � effectively turning all of Palestine into Israel.
Elliott Abrams is another unabashed supporter of the Israeli right,
now bringing his links with Israel into the service of U.S.
policymaking on Palestinian-Israeli issues. The neo-con community is
crowing about Abrams' appointment as Middle East director on the NSC
staff (where this Iran-contra criminal has already been working
since mid-2001, badly miscast as the director for, of all things,
democracy and human rights). The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes has
hailed his appointment as a decisive move that neatly cocks a snook
at the pro-Palestinian wimps at the State Department. Accurately
characterizing Abrams as "more pro-Israel, less solicitous of
Palestinians" than the State Department and strongly opposed to the
Palestinian-Israeli peace process, Barnes gloats that the Abrams
triumph signals that the White House will not cede control of Middle
East policy to Colin Powell and the "foreign service bureaucrats."
Abrams comes to the post after a year in which it had effectively
been left vacant. His predecessor, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been
serving concurrently as Bush's personal representative to
Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban and has devoted little
time to the NSC job, but several attempts to appoint a successor
early this year were vetoed by neo-con hawks who felt the appointees
were not devoted enough to Israel.
Although Abrams has no particular Middle East expertise, he has
managed to insert himself in the Middle East debate repeatedly over
the years. He has a family interest in propounding a pro-Israel
view; he is the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, one of the original
neo-cons and a long-time strident supporter of right-wing Israeli
causes as editor of Commentary magazine, and Midge Decter, a
frequent right-wing commentator. Abrams has written a good deal on
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, opposing U.S. mediation and any
effort to press for Israeli concessions. In an article published in
advance of the 2000 elections, he propounded a rationale for a U.S.
missile defense system, and a foreign policy agenda in general,
geared almost entirely toward ensuring Israel's security. "It is a
simple fact," he wrote, that the possession of missiles and weapons
of mass destruction by Iraq and Iran vastly increases Israel's
vulnerability, and this threat would be greatly diminished if the
U.S. provided a missile shield and brought about the demise of
Saddam Hussein. He concluded with a wholehearted assertion of the
identity of U.S. and Israeli interests: "The next decade will
present enormous opportunities to advance American interests in the
Middle East [by] boldly asserting our support of our friends" �
that
is, of course, Israel. Many of the fundamental negotiating issues
critical to Israel, he said, are also critical to U.S. policy in the
region and "require the United States to defend its interests and
allies" rather than giving in to Palestinian demands.
Neo-cons in the Henhouse
The neo-con strategy papers half a dozen years ago were dotted with
concepts like "redefining Iraq," "redrawing the map of the Middle
East," "nurturing alternatives to Arafat," all of which have in
recent months become familiar parts of the Bush administration's
diplomatic lingo. Objectives laid out in these papers as important
strategic goals for Israel � including the ouster of Saddam
Hussein,
the strategic transformation of the entire Middle East, the death of
the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, regime change wherever the
U.S. and Israel don't happen to like the existing government, the
abandonment of any effort to forge a comprehensive Arab-Israeli
peace or even a narrower Palestinian-Israeli peace � have now
become,
under the guidance of this group of pro-Israel neo-cons, important
strategic goals for the United States. The enthusiasm with which
senior administration officials like Bush himself, Cheney, and
Rumsfeld have adopted strategic themes originally defined for
Israel's guidance �and did so in many cases well before September
11
and the so-called war on terror � testifies to the persuasiveness
of
a neo-con philosophy focused narrowly on Israel and the
pervasiveness of the network throughout policymaking councils.
Does all this add up to dual loyalties to Israel and the United
States? Many would still contend indignantly that it does not, and
that it is anti-Semitic to suggest such a thing. In fact, zealous
advocacy of Israel's causes may be just that � zealotry, an
emotional
connection to Israel that still leaves room for primary loyalty to
the United States � and affection for Israel is not in any case a
sentiment limited to Jews. But passion and emotion � and, as
George
Washington wisely advised, a passionate attachment to any country
�
have no place in foreign policy formulation, and it is mere hair-
splitting to suggest that a passionate attachment to another country
is not loyalty to that country. Zealotry clouds judgment, and
emotion should never be the basis for policymaking.
Zealotry can lead to extreme actions to sustain policies, as is
apparently occurring in the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith Defense
Department. People knowledgeable of the intelligence community have
said, according to a recent article in The American Prospect, that
the CIA is under tremendous pressure to produce intelligence more
supportive of war with Iraq � as one former CIA official put it,
"to
support policies that have already been adopted." Key Defense
Department officials, including Feith, are said to be attempting to
make the case for pre-emptive war by producing their own unverified
intelligence. Wolfowitz betrayed his lack of concern for real
evidence when, in answer to a recent question about where the
evidence is for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, he
replied, "It's like the judge said about pornography. I can't define
it, but I will know it when I see it."
Zealotry can also lead to a myopic focus on the wrong issues in a
conflict or crisis, as is occurring among all Bush policymakers with
regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The administration's
obsessive focus on deposing Yasir Arafat, a policy suggested by the
neo-cons years before Bush came to office, is a dodge and a
diversion that merely perpetuates the conflict by failing to address
its real roots. Advocates of this policy fail or refuse to see that,
however unappealing the Palestinian leadership, it is not the cause
of the conflict, and "regime change" among the Palestinians will do
nothing to end the violence. The administration's utter refusal to
engage in any mediation process that might produce a stable,
equitable peace, also a neo-con strategy based on the paranoid
belief that any peace involving territorial compromise will spell
the annihilation of Israel, will also merely prolong the violence.
Zealotry produces blindness: the zealous effort to pursue Israel's
right-wing agenda has blinded the dual loyalists in the
administration to the true face of Israel as occupier, to any
concern for justice or equity and any consideration that interests
other than Israel's are involved, and indeed to any pragmatic
consideration that continued unquestioning accommodation of Israel,
far from bringing an end to violence, will actually lead to its
tragic escalation and to increased terrorism against both the United
States and Israel.
What does it matter, in the end, if these men split their loyalties
between the United States and Israel? Apart from the evidence of the
policy distortions that arise from zealotry, one need only ask
whether it can be mere coincidence that those in the Bush
administration who most strongly promote "regime change" in Iraq are
also those who most strongly support the policies of the Israeli
right wing. And would it bother most Americans to know that the
United States is planning a war against Iraq for the benefit of
Israel? Can it be mere coincidence, for example, that Vice President
Cheney, now the leading senior-level proponent of war with Iraq,
repudiated just this option for all the right reasons in the
immediate aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991? He was defense
secretary at the time, and in an interview with the New York Times
on April 13, 1991, he said:
"If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have
to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you
will do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would
put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to
be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that
tilts toward the Ba'athists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic
fundamentalists. How much credibility is that government going to
have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there?
How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the
people that sign on for the government, and what happens to it once
we leave?"
Since Cheney clearly changed his mind between 1991 and today, is it
not legitimate to ask why, and whether Israel might have a greater
influence over U.S. foreign policy now than it had in 1991? After
all, notwithstanding his wisdom in rejecting an expansion of the war
on Iraq a decade ago, Cheney was just as interested in promoting
U.S. imperialism and was at that same moment in the early 1990s
outlining a plan for world domination by the United States, one that
did not include conquering Iraq at any point along the way. The only
new ingredient in the mix today that is inducing Cheney to begin the
march to U.S. world domination by conquering Iraq is the presence in
the Bush-Cheney administration of a bevy of aggressive right-wing
neo-con hawks who have long backed the Jewish fundamentalists of
Israel's own right wing and who have been advocating some move on
Iraq for at least the last half dozen years?
The suggestion that the war with Iraq is being planned at Israel's
behest, or at the instigation of policymakers whose main motivation
is trying to create a secure environment for Israel, is strong. Many
Israeli analysts believe this. The Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar
recently observed frankly in a Ha'aretz column that Perle, Feith,
and their fellow strategists "are walking a fine line between their
loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests." The
suggestion of dual loyalties is not a verboten subject in the
Israeli press, as it is in the United States. Peace activist Uri
Avnery, who knows Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written
that Sharon has long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the
Middle East and that "the winds blowing now in Washington remind me
of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their
ideas from him . But the style is the same."
The dual loyalists in the Bush administration have given added
impetus to the growth of a messianic strain of Christian
fundamentalism that has allied itself with Israel in preparation for
the so-called End of Days. These crazed fundamentalists see Israel's
domination over all of Palestine as a necessary step toward
fulfillment of the biblical Millennium, consider any Israeli
relinquishment of territory in Palestine as a sacrilege, and view
warfare between Jews and Arabs as a divinely ordained prelude to
Armageddon. These right-wing Christian extremists have a profound
influence on Bush and his administration, with the result that the
Jewish fundamentalists working for the perpetuation of Israel's
domination in Palestine and the Christian fundamentalists working
for the Millennium strengthen and reinforce each other's policies in
administration councils. The Armageddon that Christian Zionists seem
to be actively promoting and that Israeli loyalists inside the
administration have tactically allied themselves with raises the
horrifying but very real prospect of an apocalyptic Christian-
Islamic war. The neo-cons seem unconcerned, and Bush's occasional
pro forma remonstrations against blaming all Islam for the sins of
Islamic extremists do nothing to make this prospect less likely.
These two strains of Jewish and Christian fundamentalism have
dovetailed into an agenda for a vast imperial project to restructure
the Middle East, all further reinforced by the happy coincidence of
great oil resources up for grabs and a president and vice president
heavily invested in oil. All of these factors � the dual loyalties
of
an extensive network of policymakers allied with Israel, the
influence of a fanatical wing of Christian fundamentalists, and oil
�
probably factor in more or less equally to the administration's
calculations on the Palestinian-Israeli situation and on war with
Iraq. But the most critical factor directing U.S. policymaking is
the group of Israeli loyalists: neither Christian fundamentalist
support for Israel nor oil calculations would carry the weight in
administration councils that they do without the pivotal input of
those loyalists, who clearly know how to play to the Christian
fanatics and undoubtedly also know that their own and Israel's bread
is buttered by the oil interests of people like Bush and Cheney.
This is where loyalty to Israel by government officials colors and
influences U.S. policymaking in ways that are extremely dangerous.
Kathleen Christison worked for 16 years as a political analyst with
the CIA, dealing first with Vietnam and then with the Middle East
for her last seven years with the Agency before resigning in 1979.
Since leaving the CIA, she has been a free-lance writer, dealing
primarily with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her
book, "Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East
Policy," was published by the University of California Press and
reissued in paperback with an update in October 2001. A second
book, "The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story,"
was published in March 2002.
Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis
side of the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as
National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of
Central Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times,
Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he
was Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis,
a 250-person unit. They can be reached at:
christison@counterpunch.org
http://www.counterpunch.com/
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/02/12/Counterpunch_1.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
WORDS are Stronger than SWORDS! ~ Spread the words to the Wilderness!
++++++++++++++++++++++ eFreePalestine ++++++++++++++++++++++
eFreePalestine is America's Secular WILDERNESS VOICE for PALESTINE!*
www.FreePalestine.com No Peace Without Occupation Free PALESTINE!
++++++++++++++++++++++ eFreePalestine ++++++++++++++++++++++
Blessed are the Peacemakers NOT the Warmongers!
Chronic INJUSTICE is the ROOT of TERRORISM!
Fighting TERRORISM while AIDING OCCUPATION is Moronic!
END TERRORISM by ENDING Israeli OCCUPATION Stupid!
SHARON NOW = MILOSEVIC Then = HITLER IN 1942!
Peace Only in a Legislatively DEzIONIZED Secular State!
Aiding Israeli OCCUPATION = Aiding TERRORISM!
Where Does Our Simplistic Absolutist President Stand?!
++++++++++++++++++++++ eFreePalestine ++++++++++++++++++++++
www.Badil.org The RIGHT of RETURN!
www.IndictSharon.net Indict the BUTCHER!
www.PMWatch.org PALESTINE MEDIA WATCH!
www.PalestineRemembered.com PALESTINE for DUMMIES!
www.FreePalestineCampaign.org Be a Peacemaker in PALESTINE!
www.InternationalAnswer.org Act Now to STOP WAR and End RACISM
www.capwiz.com/ADC/home/ Tell Congress to Stop Aid to Israel!
www.Al-Awda.org/petition.htm END zIONIST Profit from OCCUPATION!
www.RamallahOnline.com Our Occupied Home in Ramallah PALESTINE!
www.groups.Yahoo.com/group/eFreePalestine/messages ARCHIVES!
www.PalestineChronicle.com News and Views from PALESTINE!
www.DocumentaryPhotographs.com Pictures from PALESTINE!
www.PalestineMonitor.org Monitor PALESTINE!
www.WRMEA.com zIONIST-Free MEDIA! | |  | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 11:09 pm Post subject: |
| Here's a free clue...
Wolfowitz is the Assistant Secretart of Defense. Not President or Vice President. Not on the Cabinet. Not Secretary of State.
Wolfowitz manages the military, under direction of the President and Secretary of Defense. He cannot and does not determine national policy. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2002 1:49 am Post subject: |
| | Anonymous wrote: | Here's a free clue...
Wolfowitz is the Assistant Secretart of Defense. Not President or Vice President. Not on the Cabinet. Not Secretary of State.
Wolfowitz manages the military, under direction of the President and Secretary of Defense. He cannot and does not determine national policy. |
You need to get a clue as the Wolfowitz/Cheney doctrine is in full effect and is running the show with Bush's foreign policy (read the URL's via the following to get enlightened unless you are a Zionist and are spinning and truth distorting again:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/17/zionist-paul-wolfowitz-in-bush-regime-is-the-enemy-within.php | | | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2002 4:48 am Post subject: |
| Wolfowitz is the Assistant Secretart of Defense. Not President or Vice President. Not on the Cabinet. Not Secretary of State.
Wolfowitz manages the military, under direction of the President and Secretary of Defense. He cannot and does not determine national policy. | | | | guest | | Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2002 8:40 pm Post subject: Astounding |
| What is so awful about the grasp that the Israel-firsters have on our government is that no one seems to care about it. If any other country, including Italy and Ireland (the two other favored nations in this country) were to have this kind of clout, the American public would be in an uproar.
Two reasons seem to come to mine. #1 Americans are essentially anti-Araf and anti-Muslim thanks to years of propaganda. #2 Americans will not become involved until their sons and daughters come back in body bags. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2002 9:47 pm Post subject: |
| | Quote: | | #1 Americans are essentially anti-Araf and anti-Muslim thanks to years of propaganda. #2 Americans will not become involved until their sons and daughters come back in body bags. |
and unless they wake up and their attitude starts to change, terrorists will not stop killing until they do.  | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
