| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:37 am Post subject: A War for Israel? |
| A War for Israel?
By Jeffrey Blankfort
When Malaysian Prime Minister Mathahir Mohammed declared at an international Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur in mid-October that” today the Jews rule the world by proxy [and] They get others to fight and die for them,"1 the reactions in the U.S. and the West were predictable.
It was “a speech that was taken right out of the Protocols of Zion,” according to one Israeli commentator 2 and Mathahir would be accused of imitating Hitler and insuring that “Muslims around the world are similarly being fed a regular diet of classic big lies about Jewish power.” 3
Big lies? Given Israel’s unchecked dominion over the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors over the past half century, supported in every way possible by the United States, one can assume that Muslims, not to mention intelligent non-Muslims, have no need for additional instruction as to the extent of Jewish power. As further proof of its existence, if such were needed, there would be no attempt to measure the Malaysian prime minister’s words against the reality of the times to determine if there was anything accurate in his assessment.
If Mathahir could be accused of anything, it would be of being sloppy historically and using too broad a brush. The Jews, as such, control nothing. A segment of American Jewry, however, has been able, with few exceptions, to shape U.S. Middle East policy since the mid-Sixties. Given America’s position as a major world power, and now its only superpower, that is not a small achievement.
Over the years, that segment, the organized American Jewish community--in short, the Israel lobby--has amassed unparalleled political power through skillfully combining the wealth of its members 4 with its extraordinary organizational skills to achieve what amounts to a corporate takeover of the U.S. Congress plus veto power over the presidency.
There is virtually no sector of the American body politic that has been immune to the lobby’s penetration. That its primary goal has not been to improve the security and well being of the United States or the American people, but to advance the interests of a foreign country, namely Israel, may be debated, but it was acknowledged, in part, more than a dozen years ago by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) who complained to an annual conference of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council that “There’s only one issue members [of Congress[ think is important to American Jews—Israel.” 5
It was no secret that Israel had long been interested in eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and redrawing the map of the Middle East to enhance its power in the region. 6 Initiating that undertaking became a task for key individuals in and around the White House with deep roots in right wing Israeli politics. The attack on the World Trade Center supplied the opportunity. That Iraq had nothing to do with it was immaterial. The lobby’s propaganda apparatus would make the American people believe otherwise.
The first step has been completed. Saddam Hussein has been removed, not by Israel, but by the U.S. and its “coalition of the willing.” From the perspective of the Israelis and one must assume, the lobby, it is better that American and foreign soldiers do the shedding of blood, Iraqis and their own, rather than those of Israel, the world’s fourth ranked military power. Such an accusation will most assuredly draw cries of “Blood libel” from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, but it is a conclusion that one can readily draw from the facts. The degree to which the present Iraq situation, as well as the first Gulf War, can be attributed to efforts of key individuals and the major Jewish organizations that constitute the lobby is what this article will examine.* *The lobby’s existence and power well predate its alliance with what may be called its Christian fundamentalist auxiliary which has given it unprecedented influence over both Congress and the White House.
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On March 13th, 2003, during a House appropriations subcommittee hearing on foreign aid, of which Israel has long been the dominant recipient 7, Secretary of State Colin Powell took the extraordinary step of assuring members of Congress that a "small cabal" of pro-Israeli American Jews was not orchestrating President George W. Bush's drive toward war.
"The strategy with respect to Iraq has derived from our interest in the region and our support of U.N. resolutions over time," Powell said, in response to a question from the subcommittee's Republican chairman, Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe.
It is not driven by any small cabal that is buried away somewhere, that is telling President Bush or me or Vice President Cheney or [National Security Adviser Condoleeza] Rice or other members of the administration what our policies should be. 8
In fact, there is a cabal that has been driving U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration, and some of its members, notably Elliot Abrams and Michael Ledeeen, were part of the last cabal that operated in Washington under the Reagan administration, the one that brought us the Iran-Contra scandal. This one, however, is not nearly as secretive. Ironically, Powell has been and remains one of its favorite targets and his frequent public humiliations at the cabal’s hands have led seasoned observers to wonder why he hasn’t resigned.
On this occasion as he had on others, Powell played the loyal soldier, joining in what Ha’aretz’s Nathan Guttman described as the Bush Administration’s “every effort to play down Israel's role in the future military conflict…to remove any suspicion that the decision to go to war with Iraq is a pro-Israeli…step.
“But, as hard as the administration tries,” he wrote, “the voices linking Israel to the war are getting louder and louder. It is claimed the desire to help Israel is the major reason for President George Bush sending American soldiers to a superfluous war in the Gulf.” 9
The loudest among them may have been the free-swinging old line “conservative,” Pat Buchanan who charged “that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests... What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel," Buchanan wrote in the March 24 issue of the magazine he edits, the American Conservative. Because of his history of advocating right-wing causes, his comments were largely ignored by the forces mobilizing against the war.
Another of those voices was syndicated columnist Robert Novak who several months earlier had written that “in private conversation with… members of Congress, the former general [Sharon] leaves no doubt that the greatest U.S. assistance to Israel would be to overthrow Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. That view is widely shared inside the Bush administration, and is a major reason why U.S. forces today are assembling for war.” 10
Support for a U.S. attack on Iraq was not limited to Sharon or his Likud Party:
In a September 12 dialogue with Rabbi William Berkowitz at
the Center for Jewish History, former Israeli Labor prime minister and then foreign minister Shimon Peres was asked what he thought of the administration’s response to Iraq. Peres, likening the situation to the next world war, replied:
Why speak about an attack when you are defending freedom as you did in World War I, World War II and now in [World War] III?.....I don't think this is a campaign against Iraq, neither their people nor the land, but against a terrible killer, a dictator who already initiated two aggressive wars – one against Muslim Iran for seven years at a cost of 1 million [lives] and against an Arab Kuwait..... Who saved Kuwait? The Arab League? You gave Japan an improved Japan, and you gave Germany a better Germany and the Marshall Plan. I believe the strength of freedom is equal to the strength of the United States. I don't see anybody doing the job. So I justify the American position fully. The president speaks loud and clear. 11
One may speculate whether Powell would have raised the issue had he not been asked but apparently he felt the need to clear the air following an uproar that occurred ten days earlier when Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran claimed that: "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we wouldn't be doing this." 12
As could be expected, his comment was condemned by the White House and congressional Democratic leaders including Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle and Democratic House Whip Nancy Pelosi, two long-time loyal devotees of the Israeli cause. Six local rabbis and Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher called on him to resign, with the latter comparing the congressman's remarks to a speech Adolf Hitler delivered to the German parliament in 1939, accusing "Jewish financiers" of plunging Europe into a world war. 13
"Moran is symptomatic of a problem that we have been watching for several weeks and months,” lamented Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “and that is that the charge that the Jews are instigators and advocators of military action has moved from the extreme into the mainstream," This shift, he added, is emboldening people such as Moran to "have the chutzpah to say such things."
"It's out there and therefore we are concerned," Foxman said. "If, God forbid, the war is not successful and the body bags come back, who's to blame?" 14
Fueling such anxieties, the Jewish weekly Forward noted, was “the increasing media focus on the White House’s concern with protecting Israel and the views of Jewish hawks within the administration.” 15
While the mainstream press condemned Moran’s remarks, columnist Michael Kinsley 16 pointed out that “The thunderous rush of politicians of all stripes to denounce Moran's remarks as complete nonsense might suggest to the suspicious mind that they are not complete nonsense” and that Jewish organizations were being hypocritical since they were posting comments on their own web sites lauding the Israel lobby's ability to get things done. Wrote Kinsley:
…. Moran is not the only one publicly exaggerating the power and influence of the Zionist lobby these days. It is my sad duty to report that this form of anti-Semitism seems to have infected one of the most prominent and respected—one might even say influential—organizations in Washington. This organization claims that "America's pro-Israel lobby"—and we all know what "pro-Israel" is a euphemism for—has tentacles at every level of government and society.
On its Web site, this organization paints a lurid picture of Zionists spreading their party line and even indoctrinating children. And yes, this organization claims that the influence of the Zionist lobby is essential to explaining the pro-Israel tilt of U.S. policy in the Middle East. It asserts that the top item on the Zionist "agenda" is curbing the power of Saddam Hussein. (emphasis added) The Web site also contains a shocking collection of Moran-type remarks from leading American politicians. 17
The site he was referring to is that of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s official Washington lobbying arm that, which, in testament to its power, is generally referred to in the halls of Congress simply as “the lobby.”
From a one-man office when it was founded 50 years ago, AIPAC has grown into an organization of 85,000 members with activists in every Jewish community in the United States. Each Spring it holds a national three-day conference in Washington. “It’s climatic Congressional Dinner attracts hundreds of congress members and dozens of foreign ambassadors,” writes Forward editor J.J. Goldberg “all of them eager to curry good will with AIPAC and the Jewish community. Lest the point be lost, the dinner chairperson always reads a ‘roll call’ naming every senator, every representative, and ambassador present in the hall… followed by private receptions by lawmakers courting Jewish campaign support.” 18 The organization does not contribute money to candidates directly but advises numerous Jewish PACs and wealthy Jewish donors as to the campaigns where their money might be the most useful to Israel.
AIPAC holds similar conferences, but on a smaller scale, around the country in the winter, with local officials from the respective regions being honored as invited guests.
It so happened that AIPAC’s annual conference last year followed the Iraq invasion by a week. Since “ AIPAC is wont to support whatever is good for Israel, and so long as Israel supports the war,” wrote Ha’aretz's Guttmann, “so too do the thousands of the AIPAC lobbyists who convened in the American capital.” 19
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank did not go quite that far, but noted that the meeting put a spotlight on the Bush administration's “delicate dance with Israel and the Jewish state's friends over the attack on Iraq”. While, “officially,” he wrote, AIPAC had no position on the merits of a war against Iraq before it started, as delegates were heading to town, the group put a headline on its Web site proclaiming: "Israeli Weapons Utilized By Coalition Forces Against Iraq." The item featured a photograph of a drone with the caption saying the "Israeli-made Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" is being used "by U.S. soldiers in Iraq." 20
A parade of Israeli as well as top Bush administration officials --Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political director Kenneth Mehlman, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, one of the rare non-Jewish neocons, and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns -- appeared before the AIPAC audience. The meeting, attended by about 5,000 people, according to Milbank, including half the Senate and a third of the House -- was reportedly planned long before it became clear it would coincide with hostilities in Iraq. “This is not about Iraq," AIPAC spokesman Josh Block insisted. "This is about going to Congress and lobbying for the Israeli aid package." 21
House Whip Pelosi, who had reversed her early tepid opposition to the war and was now on the bandwagon, made a point of condemning anyone who sought “to place responsibility for this conflict on the American Jewish community.” In her speech to AIPAC, she expressed America’s “unshakable bond” with Israel in a variety of ways at least a dozen times. Echoing the neocon agenda, she condemned “Syria’s and Iran’s bankrolling of terror and the development of weapons of mass destruction” which she declared to be “a clear and present danger.” 22
There was déjà vu atmosphere about the AIPAC gathering. A dozen years earlier, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, AIPAC leaders acknowledged that the lobby “had worked in tandem with the [first] Bush administration to win passage of a resolution authorizing the president to commit U.S. troops to combat.” A Wall Street Journal article at the time noted that the “behind-the-scenes campaign avoided AIPAC’s customary high profile in the Capitol and relied on activists—calling sometimes from Israel itself—to contact lawmakers and build on public endorsements by major Jewish organizations.”
“Yes, we were active,” AIPAC’s director Tom Dine, told the paper. “These are the great issues of our time. If you sit on the sidelines you have no voice.” 23
And, to be sure, money had its role with Democrats who had benefited from large contributions form pro-Israel PACs being among the swing votes. Having “pro-Israel liberals behind the resolution made it easier to hold moderate Republicans as well.” 24
While the U.S. Congress was divided over going to war in 1990, “there is one place in the world which is longing for war, said retired Major General Matti Peled, a former Knesset Member and, before his death, a leader of the Israeli peace camp, “and that is Israel… Every commentator finds it his duty to join the party of the war-mongers. Arrogant statements about the slowness of the Americans are heard every day.” 25
Anti-war activists paid no attention to such statements or to the activities of the Israel lobby then nor have they since. 26, While they chanted “No Blood for Oil!,” in national protests on October 25th, Kinsley, a mainstream liberal, described the situation as “the proverbial elephant in the room….Everybody sees it, no one mentions it." 27
A month before the war, the Forward’s Ami Eden, commenting on Kinsley’s piece noted that what was “once only whispered in back rooms… [was] lately splashed in bold characters across the mainstream media, over Jewish and Israeli influence in shaping American foreign policy.”
“In recent weeks,” he wrote, “the Israeli-Jewish elephant has been on a rampage, trampling across the airwaves and front pages of respected media outlets, including the Washington Post, The New York Times, the American Prospect, the Washington Times, the Economist, the New York Review of Books, CNN and MSNBC.
“For its encore,” he added, “the proverbial pachyderm plopped itself… smack in the middle of "Meet the Press," NBC's top-rated Sunday morning news program.” 28
It occurred on February 23, when host Tim Russert read from a February 14 column by veteran journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large of the Washington Times, who argued that the "strategic objective" of senior Bush administration officials was to secure Israel's borders by launching a crusade against its enemies in the Arab world.
One of Russert’s guests was Richard Perle, at the time, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a key advisory panel to the Pentagon, as well as a fellow of the influential pro-Israel, American Enterprise Institute. Of, perhaps, even more significance, Perle had been a founder of JINSA, the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, a little known neo-con think tank that will be examined later in the article.
Russert turned to Perle and addressed the question: "Can you assure American viewers across our country that we're in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests?" And then came the bombshell: "And what would be the link in terms of Israel?"
Both Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who has family in Israel, have been routinely described in the press as the “architects” of the war on Iraq, so the question was addressed to the right person.
Clearly Perle was not prepared. Squirming slightly he replied: "Well, first of all, the answer is absolutely yes. Those of us who believe that we should take this action if Saddam doesn't disarm -- and I doubt that he's going to-- believe it's in the best interests of the United States. I don't see what would be wrong with surrounding Israel with democracies; indeed, if the whole world were democratic, we'd live in a much safer international security system because democracies do not wage aggressive wars."
I’ll leave that contradiction for another time and note, as did the Forward’s Eden, that:
it was a startling question, especially when directed at Perle, the poster boy— along with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith — for anti-semitic critics who insist the United States is being pulled into war by pro-Likud Jewish advisers on orders from Jerusalem.
“But Russert is no David Duke, nor even a Patrick Buchanan. If Russert is asking the question on national television, then the toothpaste is out of the tube: The question has entered the discourse in elite Washington circles and is now a legitimate query to be floated in polite company.
29
In a length front page story, the Washington Post’s Robert Kaiser described what appeared to be an unprecedented political partnership between Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, headlined "Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy."
"Over the past dozen years or more,.” Kaiser wrote, “supporters of Sharon's Likud Party have moved into leadership roles in most of the American Jewish organizations that provide financial and political support for Israel." 30
*
The leadership does not necessarily reflect overall Jewish opinion. A poll to gauge Jewish opinions on the war - conducted a month before it broke out - found that 56 percent of Jews were supportive of the war which corresponded to that of the general public. The rate was said to be even higher immediately afterward, corresponding to increased support for the war among the American populace in general. 31
Concern about appearances, however, had earlier led members of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, a Jewish umbrella group with 52 member organizations, to refrain from taking a bellicose stand.
"Just as we have not issued a public statement, we do not think it's the right time for the Presidents Conference to issue a public statement either," American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris told the Forward in October of 2002. "Our interest here is to not be out ahead of the administration." (Emphasis added)
In contrast, the liberal American Jewish Congress had no such reservations. "The final statement ought to be crystal clear in backing the president having to take unilateral action if necessary against Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction," Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, told the paper. The AJCongress had already issued its own position supporting the "U.S. administration in its stated position to intervene in Iraq to ensure that Iraq is no longer a threat." 32
But already, in March of 2002, Mortimer Zuckerman, the chair of the Jewish President’s conference and editor publisher of U.S. News and World Report and the N.Y. Daily News, had made his position clear, He was supporting the administration’s budding plan to remove Saddam:
The next target in the war’s phase, clearly, will be Iraq. The West’s lackluster efforts at nonproliferation have done little more than delay the inevitable—a Baghdad with nuclear weapons…The United States is prepared to take the risks, and is right to do so, in forcing a change in Iraq. 33
By late October, he was eager to get it on:
The only way to force Iraq to get rid of its terrible weapons is to rid the country of the regime that builds them. Washington must not pause… in its push to depose Saddam… We are in a war against terrorism, and we must fight that war in a time and place of our choosing. The war’s next phase, clearly, is Iraq. 34
Zuckerman would write six more editorials in the weeks leading up to the war, each more emphatic than the one before in calling for Saddam’s head. If Zuckerman’s opinions carried unusual weight, it was because the Conference of Presidents is the Jewish body whose task it is to lobby the White House and the Executive branch while AIPAC focuses on Congress.
As could be expected, accusations that Israel and its supporters within the government were orchestrating U.S. policy towards Iraq led to accusations of anti-semitism and raised questions as to what extent criticism of Israel, American Jews and Jewish officials working in the White House would be tolerated.
Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor of the New Republic, declared that references to Jewish and Israeli pro-war pressure were reminiscent of Buchanan's claims in 1990 that only soldiers with non-Jewish names would be killed in a war being pushed solely by Israel and its American "amen corner." 35
The ADL’s Foxman told the Forward that while it was legitimate to raise questions concerning the pro-Israel leanings of certain administration officials it was obligatory to note that not all the hawks were Jewish and it was most definitely not kosher to portray these individuals and Jewish organizations as composing “a shadowy Jewish conspiracy that controls American foreign policy.”
"It is an old canard that Jews control America and American foreign policy," Foxman said. "During both world wars, anti-semites said that Jews manipulated America into war. So when you begin to hear it again, there is good reason for us to be aware of it and sensitive to it." 36 Foxman was correct regarding the world wars but this time there seems to be more than enough proof that a significant number of Jewish aficionados of Israel played a decisive part in getting the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq.
Retired General Anthony Zinni, former head of the military’s Central Command which includes the Middle East, appeared to be on the same page as Mathahir. Zinni first raised questions about attacking Iraq in 1998, suggesting that a “fragmented, chaotic Iraq… could happen if this isn't done carefully [which] is more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam is now," a warning that caused Wolfowitz, then a dean at Johns Hopkins, but active behind the scenes, to attack him in print.
Zinni was simply reiterating what had been the policy of the first Bush administration and that prior to the attack on Saddam had been repeated not only by former members of the elder Bush’s cabinet such as Secretary of State James Baker, and National Security Advisor Brent Snowcroft, but by the elder Bush himself.
(This is worth noting because the first Bush and members of his administration had strong ties to the oil producing countries and the industry and had this truly been “a war for oil” they could have been expected to support it. As it happened, those who insisted that it was about oil, ignored this apparent flaw in their argument.)
As the Washington Post reported, “The more he listened to Wolfowitz and other administration officials talk about Iraq, the more Zinni became convinced that interventionist "neoconservative" ideologues were plunging the nation into a war in a part of the world they didn't understand.
I think the American people were conned into this… I don't know where the neocons came from -- that wasn't the platform they ran on… Somehow, the neocons captured the president. They captured the vice president. 37
Zinni is a harder target for the U.S. media than Mathahir so most of the pro-war shills in the mainstream media chose to ignore him. Not, however, Joel Mowbray, a right-wing ideologue from the National Review whose attack on Zinni appeared on line:
Discussing the Iraq war with the Washington Post last week, former General Anthony Zinni took the path chosen by so many anti-Semites: he blamed it on the Jews…
“Technically, the former head of the Central Command in the Middle East didn’t say ‘Jews.’ He instead used a term that has become a new favorite for anti-Semites: ‘neoconservatives.’ As the name implies, ‘neoconservative’ was originally meant to denote someone who is a newcomer to the right. In the 90’s, many people self-identified themselves as ‘neocons,’ but today that term has become synonymous with ‘Jews.’ 38
Despite Mowbray’s assertion that to criticize the neo-cons is thinly disguised anti-semitism, he is correct in noting that the term has become synonymous with a certain group of Jews. The miniscule handful that are not, such as former CIA chief James Woolsey, long-time Washington insider Frank Gaffney, former Congressman Newt Gingrich and Undersecretary of State John Bolton, are unabashed Israeliophiles.
Russian-born Max Boot, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, a veritable neocon house organ, did not wait for Zinni’s comments to realize that the inevitable criticism of the neocons’ role in producing the Iraq quagmire had to be stopped.
It is a "malicious myth," that the "Bush administration is pursuing a neoconservative foreign policy." Boot wrote in Foreign Affairs. "If only it were true!" Showing contempt for the intelligence of his readers, he trotted out one of the weaker argument the neocons have used in their defense, that while their numbers in the Bush administration "seems impressive, it also reveals that the neocons have no representatives in the administration's top tier." 39(Bush advisor Karl Rove is technically not there either, but no one would argue that he carries no clout with the president).
"The contention that the neocon faction gained the upper hand in the White House has a superficial plausibility,” wrote Boot, “because the Bush administration toppled Saddam Hussein and embraced democracy promotion [sic] in the Middle East,” but these policies, he would have us believe, are not the result of neocon cajoling, but rather an outgrowth of the September 11 attacks and the decision by Bush that the U.S. "no longer could afford a 'humble' foreign policy." That’s their spin. Let’s see how well it holds up in the light of the facts.
The neocon movement arose during the early 1970s among a small group of disgruntled liberals and former Trotskyists, some of whom had studied under Professor Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. The group was almost exclusively Jewish, and was defined by “their attachment to Israel [and to] the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic [sic] values (and American interests),” all of which “would guarantee Israel's security." 40
They were opposed as well to the Nixon administration's policy of détente and the easing of tensions with the Soviet Union which meant U.S. acquiescence to its influence over the East Bloc states. The neocons wanted to challenge the Soviets through a massive build-up of this country's military strength and a willingness to use American power to further America’s hegemonic interests, not dissimilar, as we shall see, to the agenda of the Project for a New American Century.
The neocons became in effect the intellectual arm of the Reagan administration…[Elliot] Abrams, as undersecretary of state for Latin American affairs, was a key figure in the effort to counter the Sandinistas in Nicaragua…, Perle… spearheaded the drive to deploy Pershing missiles in Western Europe [and] the overall guru formulating these policies was Paul Wolfowitz.
Well, the same team is back guiding the decisions of the Bush administration in its war against terrorism and in challenging Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction. Judging by his past record, Abrams can be expected to be a strong advocate for linking Israel's war against terrorism to America's war in muscular terms made familiar by the neocons. 41
Quite a different appraisal than that offered by Boot.
There is probably no more appropriate place to begin our probe of the neocons than with Perle who came to be known as “The Prince of Darkness” while serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration and who has been described by Joshua Micah Marshall as the neocons’ eminence grise,” whose “acolytes..are also Jewish, passionately pro-Israel, and pro-Likud. And all are united by a shared idea: that America should be unafraid to use its military power early and often to advance its interest and values.” 42
Since the invasion of Iraq, Perle has been involved in several scandals, including a conflict of interest situation which caused him to resign as chair of the Defense Policy Board, but remain as a member. I will, however, limit this article to examining his role in fomenting the present war in Iraq.
To do so, we need to go back to 1975 and the administration of Gerald Ford. In that year, Ford, like Richard Nixon before him, tried his hand at achieving a Middle East peace settlement and was confronted with an intransigent Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, then in his first tour of office.
In March of that year, exasperated with Israel’s behavior, Ford had made a speech calling for a "reassessment" of U.S. policy towards Israel On the advice of his secretary of state, none other than Henry Kissinger, Ford “conspicuously delayed delivery of weapons to Israel, including the F-15 fighter plane [and] suspended negotiations for pending financial and military aid to Israel” 43
Within White House circles, a consensus for a peace plan was emerging that “looked very much like UN Resolution 242 and the Rogers Plan” that would have required Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, with provisions that its security would be guaranteed. The idea was for President Ford to make a major speech, spelling out America’s basic interests in the Middle East and those interests required Israel’s withdrawal. 44
It was not to be. As J.J. Goldberg noted in his book, Jewish Power, “Rabin and his aides entered the Kissinger negotiations as hard bargainers with a clear sense of the bottom line…And one of the most potent weapons at their disposal was the American Jewish community…” 45
Two years before, after the end of what the Israelis describe as the Yom Kippur War, with an Arab oil embargo causing gasoline shortages and widespread resentment around the country, the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations voted to launch an emergency public-relations campaign in behalf of Israel. It would be endowed with a $3 million emergency public-relations fund and administered by a special task force on Israel. The campaign would combine the “national clout and know-how of the major [Jewish] agencies with the local resources of the federations and community-relations councils” 46
As Goldberg describes it, “President Ford was the first to taste its power, when he spoke about his ‘reassessment’ of U.S.-Israel relations. Within six weeks, Ford gave up the idea after 76 senators signed a letter, drafted by AIPAC, demanding that he “back off.” 47 The letter’s key paragraph put the president on notice that:
within the next several weeks, the Congress expects to receive your foreign aid requests for fiscal year 1976. We trust that your recommendations will be responsive to Israel’s urgent military and economic needs. We urge you to make it clear, as we do, that the United States acting in its own national interests stands firmly with Israel in search for peace in future negotiations and that this premise is the basis of the current reassessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East. 48
Senator Charles Mathias, (R-MD) acknowledged that due to lobbying pressure, “Seventy-six of us promptly affixed our signatures although no hearings had been held, no debate conducted, nor had the administration been invited to present its views. Mathias added that “as a result of the activities of the [Israel[ lobby, congressional conviction has been measurably reinforced by the knowledge that political sanctions will be applied by any who fail to deliver.” 49
Despite their victory in this situation, certain Jewish supporters of Israel in Washington were determined that such a potential crisis in U.S.-Israel relations would not to be allowed to happen again. Enter Perle and JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
As a staffer for Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson in 1972, Perle had been working with others in Washington to draft a law linking U.S.-Soviet trade relations to the right of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union. 50
Much to the displeasure of President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger 51 who saw the resulting Jackson-Vanik amendment as interference in the president’s ability to determine foreign policy, their effort would ultimately prove successful. Now, in 1976, it appears that Perle had a larger goal: to insure that the maintenance of the military power and security of Israel would become an integral part of U.S. foreign policy.
JINSA’s actual origins are as murky as the activities it carries out, but the organization that Perle established together with Max Kampelman, “an arms control negotiator whose old law firm is a U.S. agent for Israeli government military interests.” 52 was the precursor of the more well known Project for a New American Century and the well from which has emerged the collection of Jewish neocons and their fellow travelers whose signatures and thumb prints are all over America’s current adventure in Iraq as well as its threats against Syria and Iran.
According to its web site, JINSA has a two-fold mandate:
1. To educate the American public about the importance of an effective defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded and
2. To inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Its activities in behalf of the first mandate it has done out of the public’s view. Other than the Wall Street Journal article in 1992, JINSA’s existence was virtually unknown even to the political left until an article by Jason Vest appeared in the Nation in September, 2002. 53
It is JINSA’s second mandate that demands our attention. “Under a program called “Send a General to Israel,” hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax-deductible contributions bankroll an annual tour of Israel by retired U.S. generals and admirals.” 54 Judging from a look at JINSA’s board of advisers, at least 25 of these ex-generals and retired admirals have subsequently been recruited into the organization as have executives from a number of the major arms manufacturers. Consequently, it was no surprise when a JINSA protégé, former General Jay Garner, was named the first U.S. pro-consul in Iraq following the fall of the regime.
As Vest noted:
almost every retired officer who sits on JINSA's board of advisers or has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter works or has worked with military contractors who do business with the Pentagon and Israel. While some keep a low profile as self-employed "consultants" and avoid mention of their clients, others are less shy about their associations. 55
In other words, what JINSA represents can best be described as the Military-Industrial-Israeli complex.
Sitting on its board, in addition, are such public figures as former UN ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, former CIA chief James Woolsey , former Congressman Jack Kemp, Michael Ledeen, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Iran-Contra affair and former Congressman Stephen Solarz, a very important player who we will look at later in the article, and, of course, Perle.
Of all those recruited into the ranks of JINSA, none would be prove to be more important than Dick Cheney, the former congressman who served as Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration.
Looking towards the future, JINSA makes sure it is not just generals and admirals who get the grand tour. It also provides a study program in Israel for cadets and midshipmen from the Naval Academy, West Point and the Air Force Academy, from whose ranks will come the next generation of generals and admirals.
It should be noted that both of these programs are in keeping with the practice of Jewish organizations and federations across the country that routinely send public officials, such as mayors, supervisors, city councilors, police chiefs, etc.--the pool from which future members of Congress are likely to arise—on all expense paid trips to Israel, thereby virtually assuring their support for the Jewish statee in the future. No base is left uncovered.
JINSA has been “industrious and persistent,” writes Vest, and has “managed to weave a number of issues -- support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general -- into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.”
On no issue, he points out is the organization’s “hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war -- not just with Iraq, but ‘total war,’ as Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it [in 2001]. For this crew, "’regime change’ by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative.” 56
Interviewed for David Horowitz’s Front Page web site at the year’s end Ledeen’s message had not changed.
When asked about the Israel-Palestine conflict, Ledeen disingenuously replied:
I don't follow it, as you know,” then added that “I don't think it is possible for anyone to do anything meaningful about it until we have defeated the terror masters in Tehran, Damascus and Riyadh, because the terrorism against Israel gets a lot of support from those evil people. In other words, you can't solve it in situ, it's part of a regional war. Maybe, once we have liberated the Middle East and the peoples have a chance to make their own decisions, it will be easier. 57
Those in government who dissent and who insist that differences may exist between the security interests of the United States and those of Israel can expect to be publicly trashed and called on the carpet by an Israeli-friendly Congressional committee – whether it is Powell or someone from the State Department, from the CIA or the military or ex-military as in the case of General Zinni.
If there was a single “smoking gun” that led to accusations against the neocons that the attack on Iraq was a war for Israel, it was the revelation that in 1996, Perle directed a task force that included two other high ranking American Jewish neocons, current Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, senior adviser to John Bolton, Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, that produced a white paper for then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" and the name referred to putting an end to Israel’s negotiating with the Palestinians and the concept of trading land for peace.
The paper, which might have been lifted from JINSA’s web site, advocated the overthrow by Israel of Saddam Hussein as the beginning of an Israeli policy to redraw the map of the Middle East in Israel’s favor, a task that is now, apparently being carried out by U.S. soldiers in Israel’s behalf. This effort, it said, “can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq… Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly."
"Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," said the paper, which was commissioned by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), where Wurmser was working at the time. Presumably Israel was to have a say as to who would do the dominating.
Well before 9-11 and before the junior Bush could even formulate the thought, the paper called for "reestablishing the principle of preemption."
It didn’t stop there. "Israel can shape its strategic environment…by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria by sponsoring proxy attacks in Lebanon and striking at selected targets in Syria. “Given the nature of the regime in Damascus,” the paper argued, “it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan "comprehensive peace" and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program, and rejecting "land for peace" deals on the Golan Heights.”
But what surely must raise the question of “dual loyalties,” a charge which quickly subjects the questioner to accusations of “anti-semitism” from Jewish organizations are statements such as this that appear in the text:
We have for four years pursued peace based on a New Middle East. We in Israel cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. Peace depends on the character and behavior of our foes. We live in a dangerous neighborhood, with fragile states and bitter rivalries. Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to annihilate it by trading "land for peace" will not secure "peace now." Our claim to the land —to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years--is legitimate and noble. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, "peace for peace," is a solid basis for the future. (Emphasis in original) 58
In 1999, Wurmser would publish a book (with a foreword by Perle) called "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam
Hussein." It provides a detailed description of a dramatically improved Middle East, from the hawk point of view, after regime change in Iraq.
With the invasion of Iraq, it became apparent to some in Israel, that the U.S. had adopted the Clean Break crew’s agenda. Within a week of the invasion, former Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, now his country’s Defense Minister, was calling for the U.S. to neutralize all those countries in the region with whom Israel had not signed a peace treaty. 59
Two weeks later, Mofaz was still singing that tune, as Ha’aretz’s Brad Burston wrote:
“That while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took on Syria in an oratorical shock and awe campaign this week, Israel gave signs of what it would like to see Washington do to bring Damascus to heel, and what the Jewish state could gain from the effort. The Americans have taken out a 'yellow card' on them, and were right to do so." 60
Mofaz was referring to a soccer referee's warning card for players who have broken the rules of the game, and, if infractions continue, may be expelled.
According to Burston, Mofaz “set out a long list of demands he said the [U.S.] administration would be asked to press on Syria.”
Mofaz’s statements attracted the attention of the Financial Times of London which reported that even: “Before the war against Iraq was launched, members of Israel's rightwing government had been open in expressing their hope that the U.S. would next turn its attention to Syria, saying it harbors anti-Israeli militant groups, and also to Iran, for providing weapons and military support to such groups.” 61
The article quoted from an interview that Mofaz had given to the Israeli daily Maariv in which he said, "We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians and it is proper that it should be done through the Americans."
"It starts from removing the Hezbollah threat from southern Lebanon." and for "an end to Iranian aid to Hezbollah through Syrian ports.”
The headlines in the Israeli press made no effort to hide the government’s agenda, nor the Sharon government’s arrogance in expressing it.
Mofaz was not just speaking for himself. Less than a month into the invasion of Iraq, beneath the headline, “Israel to U.S.: Now deal with Syria and Iran,” Ha’aretz’s Aluf Benn, wrote:
“Two of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior aides will go to Washington for separate talks this week and suggest that the United States also take care of Iran and Syria because of their support for terror and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.” 62
They must have been buoyed when in the week following the invasion, Secretary of State Powell announced to delegates at AIPAC’s annual conference, that Syria and Iran are "supporting terror groups” and will have to "face the consequences.”
Was it any wonder then that Israel’s first air raid on Syria in 30 years was greeted sympathetically by both the president and members of Congress? While “ostensibly, it was retaliation for an atrocious Palestinian suicide bombing;” in journalist David Hirst’s view, “it was also a blatant attempt by Israel to recast itself as an operational ally of the U.S. in ‘reshaping’ the region, and in punishing an autocratic regime in Damascus that, in the neocons’ view, was next for treatment.” 63
So it is hardly a surprise that 2004 dawned with Syria in Washington’s cross-hairs. In what can only be described as a Pavlovian response to Israel’s wish list, both houses of Congress last year approved the Orwellian Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act.
While technically calling for the Bush administration to apply sanctions against Syria if it does not cease support for what Israel and Washington consider to be terrorist organizations, eliminate what they allege to be its weapons of mass destruction, and end its occupation of part of Lebanon, the act essentially gives both Israel and the administration the go-ahead to do whatever either government wants to a country that has never attacked or ever posed a threat to the U.S. The votes, 389-4 in the House, and 89-4 in the Senate, should be an embarrassment to any country that pretends to be a democracy. And yet in the climate of an American election season, the significance of those votes has been almost completely ignored.
Not only did passage of this act represent another major victory for the neocons it also served notice that their agenda had been adopted by the leading American Jewish organizations. Those that had any questions about it were content to keep them within the community.
Without the presence of Cheney in the White House, the neocons’ road to power would have been far more difficult, and this is where his recruitment into JINSA paid off.
In 1991, the organization had given him its “Distinguished Service Award” and he was declared to be “excellent” on issues of U.S.-Israeli security cooperation, according to JINSA’s director of special projects Shoshana Bryen. 64
If he was a neocon at the time, he failed to show it, telling the Senate Budget Committee in February of 1990, “America should continue to anchor its strategy to the still-valid doctrines of flexible response, forward defense [and] security alliances… Even the extraordinary events of 1989 do not mean that America should abandon this strategic foundation,” certainly a statement more Powell than Perle. 65
By the time he became the Veep, however, he was firmly on board and feeling impregnable. News of Wurmser’s participation in the Clean Break project and questions raised in the press didn’t stop Cheney from adding him to his security staff last September, joining a team led by another Jewish neocon, national security adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Wurmser, described in the Forward 66 as “a neoconservative scholar known for his close ties to the Israeli right… boasts a complex network of relationships to a variety of pro-Likud think tanks and activist groups [and] has frequently written articles arguing for a joint American-Israeli effort to undermine the Syrian regime.”
"The vice president undoubtedly chooses staff whose views are compatible with the policies of the administration," wrote Judith Kipper, a Middle East scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, in an e-mail to the Forward. "The question is, how does the vice president's [national security staff] function in relation to the president's national security staff and how important policy decisions are made in the White House. While the vice president has a critical role to play, the secrecy surrounding his unusually large foreign-policy staff raises many questions which the American public needs answered." 67
To this date, they haven’t been.
Not only did Cheney bring Wurmser as well as Feith into the administration, “It was Cheney's choices [as opposed to Powell’s] that prevailed in the appointment of both cabinet and sub-cabinet national-security officials,” as Jim Lobe has pointed out, including securing the Deputy Defense Secretary position for “his own protégé, Paul Wolfowitz. 68
Libby, “a Wolfowitz protégé, is considered a far more skilled and experienced bureaucratic and political operator than [Condaleeza]Rice,” writes Lobe. “With several of his political allies on Rice's own staff – including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Middle East director Elliott Abrams – Libby "is able to run circles around Condi," according to a former NSC official cited by Lobe.
As former CIA agents Bill and Kathy Christison summed it, up “the Bush administration… 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.” 69
As noted earlier, Israel loyalists, outfitted as lobbyists, worked behind the scenes to drum up public and Congressional support for the first Gulf War and were happy when the U.S. started bombing Iraq in 1991. They weren’t pleased with the results. Like their friends in Jerusalem, they had wanted Saddam taken out completely and the sanctions did not meet their standard of what was required. They did not spend their time writing letters to the editor.
He has been called “Wolfowitz of Arabia” in jest by the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, 70 and, with respect, “the intellectual godfather of the war…its heart and soul” by Time’s Mark Thompson. 71 If the war on Iraq is anybody’s war it is Paul Wolfowitz’s.
Wolfowitz is also no stranger to Israel or to Israelis. As a teenager he lived briefly in Israel, his sister is married to an Israeli, and “he is friendly with Israel's generals and diplomats.” 72 He is also “something of a hero to the heavily Jewish neoconservative movement” and a close friend of Perle’s. 73
In 1992, as Under Secretary of Defense for policy in the Clinton administration, he supervised the drafting of the Defense Policy Guidance document. Having objected to what he considered the premature ending of the war, his new document, contained plans for further intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.
It called for preemptive attacks and since "collective action cannot be orchestrated," the U.S. should be ready to act alone. The primary goal of U.S. policy would be to prevent the rise of any nation that could challenge U.S. supremacy. The document was leaked to the New York Times, which condemned it as extreme and it was supposed to have been rewritten. As we will see, the original concepts are now part of the current National Security Strategy. 74
In 1996, as noted above, the scene shifted to Israel and we had Perle, Feith and Wurmser preparing the Clean Break paper for Netanyahu when Bush Junior was four years from arriving in office.
Then in September of 2002, during the buildup to the invasion, the Glasgow Sunday Herald reported that it had discovered "A secret blueprint for U.S. global domination [which] reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure regime change even before he took power in January 2001." 75 What it was describing was the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and it even had a web site which spelled out its plans until they were subsequently removed. That it was discovered by a Scottish newspaper was another telling commentary on the state of American journalism.
Founded in June of 1997, following the Clean Break by a year, part of PNAC’s plan was for the U.S. to take control of the Gulf region with overwhelming and deadly military force. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," the PNAC document explains, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." [My emphasis] 76
As information about PNAC made its way slowly into the mainstream media, ABC Nightline’s Ted Koppel could no longer avoid it. On March 5th, he told his audience, that “Back in 1997, a group of Washington heavyweights, almost all of them neo-conservatives, formed an organization called the Project for the New American Century.
They did what former government officials and politicians frequently do when they're out of power, they began formulating a strategy, in this case, a foreign policy strategy, that might bring influence to bear on the administration then in power, headed by President Clinton. Or failing that, on a new administration that might someday come to power.
They were pushing for the elimination of Saddam Hussein. And proposing the establishment of a strong U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, linked to a willingness to use force to protect vital American interests in the Gulf.
All of that might be of purely academic interest were it not for the fact that among the men behind that campaign were such names as, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. What was, back in 1997, merely a theory, is now, in 2003, U.S. policy. Hardly a conspiracy, the proposal was out there for anyone to see. But certainly an interesting case study of how columnists, commentators, and think-tank intellectuals can, with time and the election of a sympathetic president, change the course of American foreign policy.”(My emphasis)
There was something different about this operation, however. Politicians out of power may plot how to return to power, but this group was more than that. It had been organized and was largely being run by the Jewish neocons whose activities we have been following, plus neocon journalists and neocon think-tank members with a long history of connections to the Israeli right wing and whose faces and opinions dominate the TV screens when issues of U.S foreign policy are under discussion. And as indicated above it had the support of the leading American Jewish lobbying organizations.
Heading up PNAC was William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the leading journal of the neocons and Robert Kagan, a columnist for the magazine as well as for the Washington Post whose columns in the Post and whose joint columns with Kristol in the Weekly Standard have maintained a steady drumbeat for Washington to send more U.S. troops to Iraq and keep to its original unilateralist position.
Asked by Koppell if “part of the, larger vision that you and your colleagues had, or have to this day, is the, removal, either by force or otherwise, of the current power structure in Iran?,” Kristol replied
I think that would be great. I hope we can do it otherwise. And I think we can do it otherwise than by force. I think getting, rid of Saddam would help there. But, no, we will have to leave American troops in that region, I think in Iraq for quite a while… It's a good investment. I think it helps keep stability in the area. And it helps strengthen the forces of freedom in the area…
In February of 1998, PNAC wanted to let President Clinton and the American public know its position on Iraq, but since, despite Koppel’s statement to the contrary, the group and its plans had not yet come to the public’s attention, it used the letterhead of the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, a largely paper organization that had been put together in 1990 “to support President Bush's policy of expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.” It read, in part:
Seven years later, Saddam Hussein is still in power in Baghdad. And despite his defeat in the Gulf War, continuing sanctions, and the determined effort of UN inspectors to fetter out and destroy his weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein has been able to develop biological and chemical munitions. To underscore the threat posed by these deadly devices, the Secretaries of State and Defense have said that these weapons could be used against our own people. And you have said that this issue is about "the challenges of the 21st Century.
Iraq's position is unacceptable. While Iraq is not unique in possessing these weapons, it is the only country which has used them -- not just against its enemies, but its own people as well. We must assume that Saddam is prepared to use them again. This poses a danger to our friends, our allies, and to our nation.
It is clear that this danger cannot be eliminated as long as our objective is simply "containment," and the means of achieving it are limited to sanctions and exhortations… Saddam must be overpowered; he will not be brought down by a coup d'etat… 77
The letter called on the president to “recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq” (presumably incorporated in the person of their favorite, Ahmed Chalabi)…and providing it with the “logistical support to succeed.
The signatories acknowledged that:
In the present climate in Washington, some may misunderstand and misinterpret strong American action against Iraq as having ulterior political motives. (My emphasis). We believe, on the contrary, that strong American action against Saddam is overwhelmingly in the national interest, that it must be supported, and that it must succeed… We urge you to provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.
Heading the list of over 40 signatures, and were its authors, Stephen Solarz and Perle with the rest, beginning with Elliot Abrams, following alphabetically. Among the others were both Feith and Wurmser, who at the time was heading the Middle East desk at the American Enterprise Institute. It included most of the board of JINSA and Wolfowitz, as well as soon to be Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who must have become aware of the direction in which the center of power was moving and what opportunities it would provide.
For those who believe the Iraq invasion was launched in Israel’s behalf, Solarz could well compete with the Clean Break Three to be the war’s poster-boy, given his record in Congress.
Representing Brooklyn in 1980, Solarz sent a newsletter to his Jewish constituents, headlined “Delivering for Israel,” in which he boasted how he was able to obtain an additional $660 million in aid for Israel under difficult circumstances. “It is a story,” in Solarz’s own words, “of how legislative maneuvering and political persistence managed to prevail over fiscal constraints and bureaucratic resistance.”
What were the “fiscal restraints?” Solarz acknowledged that it was “a time of double digit inflation, with all sorts of domestic programs facing severe cutbacks in spending.” After describing the ins and outs of his successful maneuvering, he reminded his constituents of his devotion to Israel:
When I was first elected to Congress six years ago (1974) I deliberately sought an assignment on the Foreign Affairs Committee precisely because I wanted to be in a position to be helpful to Israel… it is only the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House, and the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate who are really in a position to make a difference where it counts—in the area of foreign aid upon which Israel is so dependent. 78
For Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, PNAC assembled a book, edited by Kristol and Kagan which seems to have been adopted as the agenda for the Bush administration. It as entitled “Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy” and among its contributors were the now familiar names of Perle, Wolfowitz, and Abrams. 79
In his chapter on the Middle East, Abrams laid out the "peace through strength" concept and argues that U.S. military strength and its willingness to sue it will remain "a key factor in our ability to promote peace." He called for a pre-emptive toppling of Saddam, as did other contributors.
"Strengthening our major ally in the region, Israel, should be the base of U.S. Middle East policy,” wrote Abrams, “and we should not permit the establishment of a Palestinian state that does not explicitly uphold U.S. policy in the region."
In their introductory chapter, on Regime Change, Kristol and Kagan selected Iraq, Iran, North Korea as well as China countries that needed to be confronted. They concluded that the U.S. will have to intervene abroad "even when we cannot prove that a narrowly construed 'vital interest' of the U.S. is at stake." | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 8:20 am Post subject: Bush Outsources Mideast Policy |
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April 21, 2004
Bush Outsources Mideast Policy
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"Speaking of the Palestinians, they were dealt a lethal blow," exulted a jubilant Ariel Sharon, "It will bring their dreams to an end."
Sharon was bragging about his trip to Washington where he bullied Bush into selling out the Palestinians as thoroughly as Neville Chamberlain sold out the Czechs at Munich.
"Sharon Got It All" blared a banner headline in Israel. Indeed, he did.
And Raging Bull celebrated his diplomatic victory by ordering up a Saturday night hit on Abdel Rantisi, the Hamas leader who replaced Sheik Yassin, whom Sharon had assassinated by Apache gunship in March as the crippled sheik was being wheeled out of a mosque after dawn prayers.
As he surely intended, Sharon left the Arab world with the clear impression that the Americans had given a green light to his "extrajudicial" killings. Sharon seeks to make his war on the Palestinians America's war. If Bush lets him succeed, we are finished in the Middle East.
But how did Sharon, under a cloud of scandal and corruption, at the end of his tether, badger Bush into abdicating our role as "honest broker" of Mideast peace, and into signing on to a "Sharon Plan" even a Palestinian quisling would reject?
According to the New York Times, Sharon threatened not to come to Washington unless Bush, in advance and in writing, agreed to capitulate. "In a moment of diplomatic brinkmanship," writes James Bennet, Sharon threatened to cancel his trip if Bush refused to give him "the guarantees he wanted in exchange for his plan to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip."
Still, one must marvel at Sharon's savvy in sizing up Bush, and at the man's chutzpah. Look at what he got for giving up less than nothing.
Gaza was captured from Egypt in 1967. Though almost all Israelis wish to be rid of it, 7,500 Jewish squatters have moved into the enclave that is home to 1.2 million Palestinians. Israelis now occupy 20 percent of Gaza, though they are but one-half of 1 percent of the population.
However, under the occupation, Hamas has flourished in Gaza and Israeli troops have been tied down there. About to be forced out of Gaza by Hamas, as Israel was forced out of Lebanon by Hezbollah, Sharon decided to get Bush to reward him for doing what he had to do.
Sharon's ultimatum: In return for giving up Gaza, Bush must give him title to more desirable Palestinian lands on the West Bank.
Bush, who once traded Sammy Sosa away, agreed. Only this time he traded America's reputation for honest dealing for a few words of fatuous praise from Sharon about what a great battler against terrorism he is. All to help Bush and Rove carry the south Florida condos.
But John Kerry is not a man easily out-pandered.
"That Bush's move was good politics," writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, "was evidenced by Democratic rival John F. Kerry's quick move not to let Bush outflank him among pro-Israel voters."
"I think that could be a positive step," said Kerry of the Bush sell-out of the Palestinians. Our first presidents were George Washington and John Adams. Now we have on offer George Bush and John Kerry. Does that not tell you something about what has become of the old republic?
What did Bush give up? None of the Palestinians driven out of their homes by the Irgun massacre at Deir Yassin and during the 1948 war will ever be allowed to return. Palestinian rights in that 78 percent of Palestine that is already Israel, and in the sectors of the remaining 22 percent Sharon plans to annex, are forfeit forever. At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered Arafat a more generous peace than Bush, under Sharon's direction, is willing to give the Palestinians.
Second, major Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, planted by Sharon in violation of international law, which every U.S. president has called "obstacles to peace," are now deeded to Israel. Like Lord Balfour, Bush is surrendering title to Arab lands he does not own and surrendering Palestinian rights that are not his to give up.
As for the Sharon Wall that snakes in and out of the West Bank, incorporating Palestinian fields, olive groves, homes and villages, Bush no longer insists it be confined to Israeli territory.
What does the mini-Munich mean? The great Zionist land thief has gotten America's blessing to keep his stolen goods. George Bush has out-sourced his Mideast policy to Tel Aviv. The custodian of our reputation for decency and honor in an Arab world of 22 nations is now Sharon. As for Palestinians who put their faith and trust in the United States, they have been exposed as fools.
Can anyone in the White House believe that Bush's capitulation is anything but a formula for endless war and enduring hatred of an America that cannot say no to Ariel Sharon?
Any Arab leader who signed on to this Sharon-Bush plan, which cedes huge swatches of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem to Israel and leaves Palestinians in bantustans walled in with Israeli concrete, would be regarded as a traitor to his people, and deservedly so.
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March 30, 2004
9/11 Commission Director: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel
by Emad Mekay
Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.
IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 – the 9/11 commission – in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.
The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.
Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.
He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 – it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
"And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the "war on terrorism" it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.
Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of three to four billion dollars.
Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role.
Known in intelligence circles as "Piffy-ab", the board is supposed to evaluate the nation's intelligence agencies and probe any mistakes they make.
The unpaid appointees on the board require a security clearance known as "code word" that is higher than top secret.
The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) Brent Scowcroft, currently chairs the board in its work overseeing a number of intelligence bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the various military intelligence groups and the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office.
Neither Scowcroft nor Zelikow returned numerous phone calls and email messages from IPS for this story.
Zelikow has long-established ties to the Bush administration.
Before his appointment to PFIAB in October 2001, he was part of the current president's transition team in January 2001.
In that capacity, Zelikow drafted a memo for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on reorganizing and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC) and prioritizing its work.
Richard A. Clarke, who was counter-terrorism coordinator for Bush's predecessor President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) also worked for Bush senior, and has recently accused the current administration of not heeding his terrorism warnings, said Zelikow was among those he briefed about the urgent threat from al-Qaeda in December 2000.
Rice herself had served in the NSC during the first Bush administration, and subsequently teamed up with Zelikow on a 1995 book about the unification of Germany.
Zelikow had ties with another senior Bush administration official – Robert Zoellick, the current trade representative. The two wrote three books together, including one in 1998 on the United States and the "Muslim Middle East".
Aside from his position at the 9/11 commission, Zelikow is now also director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
His close ties to the administration prompted accusations of a conflict of interest in 2002 from families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, who protested his appointment to the investigative body.
In his university speech, Zelikow, who strongly backed attacking the Iraqi dictator, also explained the threat to Israel by arguing that Baghdad was preparing in 1990-91 to spend huge amounts of "scarce hard currency" to harness "communications against electromagnetic pulse", a side-effect of a nuclear explosion that could sever radio, electronic and electrical communications.
That was "a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange – they (Iraqi officials) were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis", according to Zelikow.
He also suggested that the danger of biological weapons falling into the hands of the anti-Israeli Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, would threaten Israel rather than the United States, and that those weapons could have been developed to the point where they could deter Washington from attacking Hamas.
"Play out those scenarios," he told his audience, "and I will tell you, people have thought about that, but they are just not talking very much about it".
"Don't look at the links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but then ask yourself the question, 'gee, is Iraq tied to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the people who are carrying out suicide bombings in Israel'? Easy question to answer; the evidence is abundant."
To date, the possibility of the United States attacking Iraq to protect Israel has been only timidly raised by some intellectuals and writers, with few public acknowledgements from sources close to the administration.
Analysts who reviewed Zelikow's statements said they are concrete evidence of one factor in the rationale for going to war, which has been hushed up.
"Those of us speaking about it sort of routinely referred to the protection of Israel as a component," said Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies. "But this is a very good piece of evidence of that."
Others say the administration should be blamed for not making known to the public its true intentions and real motives for invading Iraq.
"They (the administration) made a decision to invade Iraq, and then started to search for a policy to justify it. It was a decision in search of a policy and because of the odd way they went about it, people are trying to read something into it," said Nathan Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University and an expert on the Middle East.
But he downplayed the Israel link. "In terms of securing Israel, it doesn't make sense to me because the Israelis are probably more concerned about Iran than they were about Iraq in terms of the long-term strategic threat," he said.
Still, Brown says Zelikow's words carried weight.
"Certainly his position would allow him to speak with a little bit more expertise about the thinking of the Bush administration, but it doesn't strike me that he is any more authoritative than Wolfowitz, or Rice or Powell or anybody else. All of them were sort of fishing about for justification for a decision that has already been made," Brown said.
Odigo Says Israeli Workers Were Warned of 911 Attack 2 Hours Before
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html
Rice: Israel's Security is Key to Security of Rest of World
http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=2380 | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 2:07 am Post subject: Bleier/Sniegoski: : Raimondo: War on Iraq as a "Covert |
| Subj: Re: Bleier/Sniegoski: : Raimondo: War on Iraq as a "Covert Operation"
Date: 4/22/04 5:49:29 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
Neocons have completely shaped Bush administration national security policy. There is no evidence that Bush has any idea about American policy in the Middle East. Simply letting smart Jews run the major activities of his administration does not demonstrate intelligence. A chimp could do likewise. That his war policy and character somehow resonates with a large number of American voters doesn't reflect any intelligence on his part. Unintelligent people can be popular for the very fact that they act in an unintelligent manner.
----- Original Message -----
Subj: Bleier/Sniegoski: : Raimondo: War on Iraq as a "Covert Operation"
Date: 4/22/04 12:51:53 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: rbleier@igc.org
To: rbleier@igc.org
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friends:
I agree with virtually everything in the important articles you will find below. Nevertheless I can't resist the opportunity to advance my quibble with Sniegoski/Raimondo and others who think Bush is dimwitted or actually stupid. True, he’s inarticulate, illiterate, generally ignorant and extraordinarily narrow minded and ideological –very much like the bulk of his supporters, but there is definitely a brain there. He played a key role in his father’s 1998 winning campaign. Indeed, he many have been the Karl Rove of that campaign, as the latter was sidelined for a time due to campaign improprieties which became public.
I make my case for a shrewd and calculating George W. Bush on the widely publicized information from Richard Clarke’s book where we find George W. Bush himself badgering and attempting to intimidate Clarke into connecting Iraq with the events of 9/11. The incident seems to implicate George W. Bush himself as one of the chief evildoers and masterminds of war -- not merely the pawn of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, et al.
His motives are perhaps somewhat more obscure than the others. But Bush’s intent to make war on Iraq may have been simply a Rovian calculation that such a war would be good politics – a calculation that despite the horrors of current headlines may yet turn out to close enough to the mark to secure his re-election – along with ballot problems in many states including Florida such as unverifiable touch screen voting, the purging of tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters from the roles, intimidation of such voters, etc. –all of which he is clearly apprised of. Moreover, the romantic view of war for its own sake is at the heart of the neocon vision of the importance of demonstrating American power, especially to enforce Israeli hegemony. In their world there is no other foreign or domestic agenda to speak of besides deregulation and tax benefits for the wealthy. --RB
----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen Sniegoski
To: Sniegoski, Stephen
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 7:22 AM
Subject: Raimondo: War on Iraq as a "Covert Operation"
Friends,
Raimondo: War on Iraq as a "Covert Operation"
Raimondo asks and answers the question that mainstream Bob Woodward dares not consider. "Bob Woodward says the neocons set up a 'separate government' – but to what purpose?" I am not even sure Woodward dared to utter the word "neocon," but that was the cast of characters he identified. Raimondo writes: "While mind-reading George W. Bush is like trying to discern the hidden meaning of a blank page, the neoconservative mindset is hardly a state secret. In understanding what motivates them in their relentless pursuit of ‘regime change,’ not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, one only has to ask: Who benefits, and who pays?" Of course, America pays, Sharon’s Israel benefits.
Regarding the benefits to Sharon’s Israel, Raimondo points out:
"Israel's West Bank annexation – piously described as a ‘unilateral withdrawal’ by Sharon and his amen corner in the West – is the first big payoff"
"The de facto disintegration and break-up of Iraq as a unitary nation, an increasingly likely consequence of the U.S. invasion, is an outcome that, again, benefits Israel, to the detriment of American interests. A campaign to similarly atomize Syria is next, with economic sanctions already in place, and a border incident waiting to happen. But the War Party's agenda doesn't end in Damascus: it's on to Tehran, Riyadh, and, eventually, Cairo."
Of course, destabilization of the Middle East was long time Likudnik policy—Oded Yinon’s policy paper entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," proposed a plan for the destabilization and fragmentation of Israel’s Middle East enemies. [http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20zionist_plan_for_the_middle_east.htm].
And, as I pointed out in an earlier message [Iraq in Israel’s Grand Strategy], the idea of breaking up Israel’s Arab neighbors actually was Zionist policy prior to the independence of Israel in 1948, and was promoted by David Ben-Gurion himself. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2003/634/op2.htm
What Woodward describes as the "separate government" (run by neocons) actually became THE US GOVERNMENT.
Raimondo writes: "In effect, the neocons pulled off a coup d'etat, a palace revolution in which veteran government officials like Richard Clarke, and the CIA and Pentagon ‘old guard,’ were pushed aside. . . . If the purpose of the U.S. government is to protect American security and interests, then why did there need to be a "separate" and competing government – unless that government was pursuing other, non-American interests?"
Raimondo goes on to describe the war on Iraq as a successful "covert operation."
"There is, however, no way to understand where we are, and how we got here, unless we see the push to get us into Iraq as a successful covert operation. A success, that is, not in terms of American interests, but in the terms of those who carried it out."
"On the other hand, the concept of the Iraq war as a successful Israeli covert operation is altogether plausible. It would hardly be the first time a foreign government made a concerted effort to drag us into war on their side. And just look at the pattern of recent events: Israel gains, America pays: Israel assassinates, Americans die: Israel conquers, and the American government concurs wholeheartedly: Israel says ‘Jump!’ and the government of the United States only wants to know how high. Israel's partisans inside the U.S. government – who, according to top officials and other ‘defectors,’ set up their own ‘separate government’ – seized the helm and steered the American ship of state into turbulent waters."
Raimondo has done an excellent job in pointing out how the neocons were the fundamental driving force for this was and actually drove the build-up for the war. He has been on this issue from the very beginning, and must be commended for having the courage to do so. However, I disagree with his description of the neocon operation as a "covert operation." There was nothing very covert about Israel or the neocons, and their very open support of Israel. They have made it quite public. And many openly hold important positions of power regarding national security in the Bush administration. Obviously, some of their operations have been secretive, and they didn’t just come out and say that they were leading the US into war to advance the interests of Israel. However, the link between the neocons and Israel and Israel and the war on Iraq was quite obvious. It has even seeped out in the mainstream media. But most mainstream folk have not have the courage to pursue the issue very far and give it the publicity that it needs. Hence, average Americans are generally unaware of the neocons’ role. Of course, this failure and fear is due the taboo on saying anything that displeases powerful Jewish organizations, which can bring about the lethal charge of "anti-Semitism."
I discussed all this in my "The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel." http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/conc_toc.htm
The only activity that was definitely "covert" (if it did exist) was the possible links between Administration officials and Israel to the September 11 terrorism. Did leading members of the Bush Administration intentionally avoid authorizing actions that might have stopped the terrorists? What was the connection to 911 of the Mossad agents in the US, some of whom lived near chief terrorist Mohammed Atta in Hollywood, Florida, while others took pictures of the burning World Trade Towers and celebrated? In short, the neocon push for war was pretty open, although more can still be learned, but the September 11 terrorism still has its significant mysteries, which may never be uncovered (and, of course, will definitely never be uncovered if no one dares to make an extensive investigation).
_________________________________________________
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2340
April 19, 2004
Plan of Attack
Bob Woodward says the neocons set up a 'separate government' – but to what purpose?
by Justin Raimondo
It was a twofer for the serial killers at the helm in Tel Aviv. Israeli helicopter gunships had just taken out a blind paraplegic, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, when his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, also went up in a puff of smoke. The United States, as usual, exculpated Israel, while the Arab world blamed Uncle Sam. What made it all so typical of Israeli behavior was the timing.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had barely stepped off the plane, back from his triumphant visit to Washington – where the President of the United States had capitulated to his every whim, agreeing to the annexation of key portions of the West Bank. While the Arabs writhed in helpless fury, and the fighting in Iraq rose to new heights of blood-drenched fury, Rantisi was struck down along with several bystanders, and the Arab are blaming us for that, too.
Israeli policies are undeniably fueling the Iraqi insurgency, and swelling radical Islamist ranks. In a statement issued by a previously-unknown group claiming responsibility for the horrific death-by-mutilation of four American quasi-military contractors in Fallujah, the link was made explicitly:
"'This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine and the family of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the criminal Zionists,' said in the statement from the 'Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin.' 'We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq.'"
How many more Americans soldiers will die in Iraq as a result of Sharon's calculated murders is a grim statistic to contemplate. As an emboldened Israel continues its rampage through Palestine, that number will surely grow.
Far from trying to mitigate these fatal consequences, the Israelis revel in their leverage with the Imperial hegemon. As one member of the Israeli delegation put it:
"I think this will probably be remembered as one of the most important successful political initiatives that Israel has ever undertaken vis-a-vis the United States. It takes into consideration all the important elements: that the (Palestinian refugees') claim of return is not to Israel but to a Palestinian state, the need for defensible borders and the recognition that Israel cannot return to the 1949 lines and a recognition of the demographic realities. As far as the statement is concerned, the outline of any future permanent agreement with the Palestinians has been documented and signed by the president of the United States."
Recent events have greatly clarified the exact meaning and motives of the War Party in recklessly invading Iraq without a plan, without enough troops to police the place, and without a clue as to the consequences. As the body-bags come home and the bills come in, a growing number of conservative Republicans are beginning to ask: whatever possessed him to do it? Why did he go against the advice and example of his own father, and listen to the false counsel of the neocons – and what was their motive, anyway?
While mind-reading George W. Bush is like trying to discern the hidden meaning of a blank page, the neoconservative mindset is hardly a state secret. In understanding what motivates them in their relentless pursuit of "regime change," not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, one only has to ask: Who benefits, and who pays?
Israel's West Bank annexation – piously described as a "unilateral withdrawal" by Sharon and his amen corner in the West – is the first big payoff. That it comes just as the American casualty rate is beginning to soar underscores the essence of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. While America's fight against Al Qaeda and defending the homeland against terrorism is made more difficult by the occupation of Iraq, the Israeli goal of leveling any and all threats to its national security has been advanced – and the chaos, too, is a benefit.
The de facto disintegration and break-up of Iraq as a unitary nation, an increasingly likely consequence of the U.S. invasion, is an outcome that, again, benefits Israel, to the detriment of American interests. A campaign to similarly atomize Syria is next, with economic sanctions already in place, and a border incident waiting to happen. But the War Party's agenda doesn't end in Damascus: it's on to Tehran, Riyadh, and, eventually, Cairo. As Laurent Murawiec, the ex-LaRouche cultist who famously briefed the Pentagon Policy Board at Richard Perle's invitation, put it:
"Iraq is the tactical pivot,
Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot,
Egypt the prize."
While Murawiec may not have fully recovered from his decade-plus immersion in a nut-cult, one has to wonder if the leaders of our own government are any less nutty. Which raises the question, just who is running things, anyway? The answer, according to Colin Powell, reports Bob Woodward in his new book, Plan of Attack, is not at all clear:
"Powell felt Cheney and his allies – his chief aide, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's 'Gestapo' office – had established what amounted to a separate government."
In effect, the neocons pulled off a coup d'etat, a palace revolution in which veteran government officials like Richard Clarke, and the CIA and Pentagon "old guard," were pushed aside. (Go here for an up close and detailed description of the purge by former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski.) If the purpose of the US government is to protect American security and interests, then why did there need to be a "separate" and competing government – unless that government was pursuing other, non-American interests?
Not only the Woodward book, but the series of whistleblowers who have come out of the closet and revealed the inner workings of the Bush administration, lead us into territory that, for want of a better word, can only be called a "conspiracy theory." Which, one supposes, is one way of saying that everything is not an accident. There is, however, no way to understand where we are, and how we got here, unless we see the push to get us into Iraq as a successful covert operation. A success, that is, not in terms of American interests, but in the terms of those who carried it out.
The Iraq war, the diversion away from the real authors of 9/11, the costly obsession with Saddam Hussein, the professed intention of "staying the course" of an unsustainable policy – none of it makes any sense when viewed through the prism of American national interests. The entire thrust of our Middle East policy is counter-intuitive and counterproductive. Only two parties benefited from the invasion of Iraq: the Likudniks (and their American branch office) loyal to Sharon and the jihadists associated with Osama Bin Laden.
Sharon now has a weapon to wield against the radicals in his own party, who want all the settlements to stay in the West Bank, and the Labor Party, which accuses him of being too intransigent. Also, perhaps, his triumph has provided him with a shield to ward off the growing stench of personal scandal. Bin Laden, on the other hand, is winning a worldwide following and recruiting hand over fist, forging the next generation of suicide-bombing fanatics, who dream of two, three, many more 9/11s.
No, I'm not saying that agents of Osama bin Laden have taken over the US government. Although Coleen Rowley and her co-workers at the FBI used to joke that headquarters acted at times as if it had been infiltrated by Al Qaeda, and Clarke quips in his book that Bush must have been "channeling Osama bin Laden" in coming up with the scheme to invade Iraq, this kind of rhetorical flourish is not meant to be taken literally.
On the other hand, the concept of the Iraq war as a successful Israeli covert operation is altogether plausible. It would hardly be the first time a foreign government made a concerted effort to drag us into war on their side. And just look at the pattern of recent events: Israel gains, America pays: Israel assassinates, Americans die: Israel conquers, and the American government concurs wholeheartedly: Israel says "Jump!" and the government of the United States only wants to know how high. Israel's partisans inside the US government – who, according to top officials and other "defectors," set up their own "separate government" – seized the helm and steered the American ship of state into turbulent waters.
The storm, I fear, is only just beginning. What began as a police action, a "mopping up" of Ba'athist "remnants," is now taking on the scope of a nationwide anti-American insurgency. Americans want to know how and why we were rushed into war – and by whom.
This war, and the policy that gave birth to it, is criminal in so many different ways, but surely treason is not the least of the crimes that can be ascribed to the leaders of the War Party. The investigation into the machinations of this group – who acted, in effect if not consciously, as agents of a foreign power – is a ticking time-bomb for this administration – or, at least, for the "separate government" set up by the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Feith junta.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I hate to say "I told you so," but, hey, didn't I predict that military operations in Iraq would soon come to resemble the siege at Waco? The news that our "psyops" brigade is playing heavy metal rock really really loud in hopes of flushing out Fallujah's defenders confirms it. Okay, so I was writing about the siege of Najaf, not Fallujah, where the heavy metal weapon is being deployed, but, hey, it's all the same, isn't it – at least according to professional ignoramus Andrew Sullivan, who writes:
"SADR CAPITULATES: I'm unnerved by the presence of Iranians helping to broker some kind of deal with al Sadr, but heartened by the fact that the extremist revolt in Fallujah seems to have been quelled – largely by Marine force and by moderate Shiite realism."
But of course Sadr is in Najaf, not Fallujah, which is Sunni, not Shi'ite. And somebody ought to tell those rebellious Fallujans they've been "quelled," because they don't seem to have realized it as yet. Why anyone takes Sullivan seriously – gay affirmative action? – is waaaaay beyond me.
–Justin Raimondo
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin
SAVE THIS | EMAIL THIS | Close | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 2:08 pm Post subject: (NEOCONS) Going Back Where They Came From |
| http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=2371
April 23, 2004
Going Back Where They Came From
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times.
The Weekly Standard editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and convert to neo-liberalism.
Alluding to his father Irving's definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality, Kristol describes a neoliberal as a "neoconservative who has been mugged by reality in Iraq."
Ranking his political preferences, Kristol added, "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan....If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives."
Yes, it does. But as John Kerry backs partial birth abortion, quotas, raising taxes, homosexual unions, liberals on the Supreme Court and has a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy, how can Kristol prefer him to other conservatives? Answer: War and Israel.
Like Kristol, Kerry wants more U.S. troops sent to Iraq where they can advance the neocons' project for empire. And at a fund-raiser in Juno Beach, Fla., Kerry declared eternal fealty to Israel: "I have a 100 percent record – not a 99, a 100 percent record – of sustaining the special relationship and friendship that we have with Israel."
Kristol's warning that the neocons could break with the Right and go to Kerry is an admission of what many conservatives have long argued. To neocons, Israel comes first, second, and third, conservative principles be damned.
The day after Kristol said he preferred Kerry to conservatives skeptical of committing more troops to Iraq, this item appeared in The Wall Street Journal:
"Mr. Kristol thinks Mr. Bush should use the revelations [from the Woodward book] to shake up his war cabinet by firing Mr. Powell...along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has pushed for smaller deployments of U.S. forces than some critics, including Mr. Kristol, think wise."
Set aside the suicidal folly of Bush dynamiting his war cabinet in an election year by firing its most famous members, and consider the ingratitude, the ruthlessness, and the cynicism on display here.
When it was launched in 1995, The Weekly Standard called on Colin Powell to run for president and offered its endorsement. Purpose: Hook up with the most popular man in the GOP who could restore the neocons and Kristols to preeminence and power. Powell rebuffed the offer. Ever since, he has been a target of abuse for having repelled the boarding party.
As for Rumsfeld, he has been a hero of neoconservatives for two decades. He co-signed the neocons' 1998 open letter to Clinton urging war on Iraq. He brought Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith into his Pentagon in the No. 2 and 3 slots. He put Perle in charge of the Defense Review Board. After 9/11, according to Richard Clarke, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were making the case for attacking Iraq immediately, even before Bush had ousted the Taliban enablers of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
Agree or disagree with the defense secretary, Rumsfeld has been a lion in the neocon cause. To see the Weekly Standard snake on him like this brings to mind that wretched crowd in Yankee Stadium that took to booing Joe Dimaggio at the end of his career.
With Iraq turning into the Mesopotamian morass some of us warned it would become, the neo-Jacobins have decided they are not going to be the ones to ride the tumbrels.
In times like this character comes through. By turning on the men they persuaded to go to war, by fabricating alibis and inventing excuses to absolve themselves of culpability for what they labored to create, they have revealed themselves for what they are: hustlers and opportunists devoid of principle, driven by an ideology of power and a passionate attachment to a nation not their own.
The Old Right curmudgeons who warned us against giving these vagabonds food, shelter and a warm place by the fire were right. We should have put them back out on the street.
President Bush should have listened to his father who kept the neocons at some remove, and he had best beware, because they have a major card yet to play. That card is escalation.
With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, the neocon agenda is to widen the war into Syria, Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and convert it into "World War IV," the war of their dreams, a war of civilizations, an Armageddon, with America and Israel on one side and Islam on the other.
Exiting Iraq with honor and avoiding the wider war for which the neocons are even now scheming is the first duty of patriots.
A WAR FOR ISRAEL?:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/22/a-war-for-israel.php
Bush threatens to attack Iran to protect Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/21/bush-threatens-to-attack-iran-to-protect-israel.php
JINSA/PNAC Neocons Ready to Expand Iraq War to Syria/Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/20/jinsa-pnac-neocons-ready-to-expand-iraq-war-to-syria-iran.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 2:24 pm Post subject: More on the JINSA/CSP/PNAC Neocon Zionist Warmongers |
| http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17060 (see the links which are embedded in this URL):
'A Clean Break' is an embedded link at the following article is a must read:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j100603.html
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
Notice how JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)/PNAC (Project for the New American Century) Zionist extremists Richard Perle and Douglas Feith (who co-authored the 'A Clean Break' document for Likudite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu back in 1996) are ardently in supportive of going after Hizbollah in Lebanon/Syria for Israel (be sure to read the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked under the map of 'greater Israel' after scrolling down to it on the left at www.nowarforisrael.com as more about 'A Clean Break' is also linked after scrolling down to it at www.irmep.org).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and Con-Artists
By Francis Boyle
It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible
tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli "Neoconservative" Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulatingthe tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing
so.1 Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or
supporting Al-Qaeda . But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John
Bolton, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr.
administration.
These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the
Machiavellian/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught
political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of
Political Science. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law,
politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two
scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B.
Drury.2 I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly
after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science
Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary
executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of
Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I
concur completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I
also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American
political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con
cabal.3
The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other
students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is
precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the
University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years
later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr.
Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft
received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967. Many of his
lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice are members of the
right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, and totalitarian Federalist
Society (aka "Feddies"),4 which originated in part at the University of
Chicago. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA
II, which constitute the blueprint for establishing an American Police
State.5 Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still
covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001
anthrax attack on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to
stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law.6
Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the
University of Chicago "School" of Law-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics,
which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman,
now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of
Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted,
plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the
developing world.7 This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans
are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters." Pursuant to
Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq
and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the
U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton, formerly under Vice President Dick
Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well
as the Bush Family itself. Enron.
Although miseducated8 at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies"
proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian
supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration
was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an
"unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons,
both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal.9
According to his own public estimate and boast before the American
Enterprise Institute, President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to
occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices
where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against
its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians.10 Most
of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere are
Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the
United States. Dual loyalties indeed.11
In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who
set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was
responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions,
half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then
disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media12 in order to generate public
support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and
in order to steal Iraq's oil.13 To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once
rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to
deceive will always find those willing to be deceived.14 As I can attest
from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago
Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian
cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli
by heart and rote at the University of Chicago.
As for the University of Chicago overall, its biblical Gospel is Allan
Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987).15 Of course Bloom was
another protégé of Strauss, as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his
Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, formerly on the
University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a
hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All
this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom is still
worshiped and his elitist screed against American higher-education still
revered on a pedestal.
In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking
national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against
Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor
Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the éminence grise of Ravelstein. With
friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein
alone, Wolfowitz warrants investigation by the F.B.I.
Just recently the University of Chicago officially celebrated its Bush Jr.
Straussian Neo-Con cabal, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi,
Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head
of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79
(Bush Jr's roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as
faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55,
together with Strauss. According to the University of Chicago Magazine,
Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy."16 It is
correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas,"
but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Nietzschean, and
elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the
unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared
one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy."
Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom
product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in Iraq? Or for
that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000
presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the
Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were Feddies?17
Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot.18
At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in
1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the
"first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International
Understanding" to Robert "Mad Bomber" McNamara.19 In other words, the
University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the
greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era.20 Do not
send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to
become warmongers like Wolfowitz or totalitarians like Ashcroft! The
University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool.
Endnotes
1. See, e.g., Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance 108 (2003).
2. Shadia B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo
Strauss and the American Right (1999). See also Alain Frachon & Daniel
Vernet, The Strategist and the Philosopher: Leo Strauss and Albert
Wohlstetter, Le Monde, April 16, 2003, translated into English by Norman
Madarasz on Counterpunch.org., June 2, 2003.
3. See also David Brock, Blinded by the Right (2002).
4. George E. Curry & Trevor W. Coleman, Hijacking Justice, Emerge,
October 1999, at 42; Jerry M. Landay, The Conservative Cabal That's
Transforming American Law, Washington Monthly, March 2000, at 19; People for
the American Way, The Federalist Society (August 2001); Institute for
Democracy Studies, The Federalist Society and the Challenge to a Democratic
Jurisprudence (January 2001).
5. Francis A. Boyle, Bush's Banana Republic, Counterpunch.org, Oct. 11,
2002.
6. Francis A. Boyle, Biowarfare, Terror Weapons and the U.S.: Home Brew?,
Counterpunch.org, April 25, 2002.
7. See Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2003), at 5 et seq.
8. See Chomsky on Miseducation (Donald Macedo ed. 2000).
9. Francis A. Boyle, Take Sharon to The Hague, Counterpunch.org, June 6,
2002.
10. White House Press Release, President Discusses the Future of Iraq,
Washington Hilton Hotel, Feb. 26, 2003.
11. Nasser H. Aruri, Dishonest Broker, 193-216 (2003). See also Tanya
Reinhart, Israel/Palestine (2002); Cheryl A. Rubenberg, The Palestinians
(2003).
12. Norman Solomon, The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media (1999); Noam
Chomsky, Media Control (1997).
13. Seymour M. Hersh, Selective Intelligence, New Yorker, May 8, 2003;
Michael Lind, The Weird Men Behind George W. Bus's War, New Statesman -
London, April 7, 2003; Julian Borger, The Spies Who Pushed for War, The
Guardian, July 17, 2003.
14. Machiavelli, The Prince 147 (M. Musa trans. & ed. 1964): ". . . and
men are so simple-minded and so dominated by their present needs that one
who deceives will always find one who will allow himself to be deceived."
This Bilingual Edition of The Prince by Mark Musa was the one preferred by
Joseph Cropsey to teach us students.
15. But see Lawrence W. Levine, The Opening of the American Mind (1996).
16. Between the Lines, University of Chicago Magazine, June 2003, at 54
17. Vincent Bugliosi, The Betrayal of America (2001); Greg Palast, The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy 11-81 (2003).
18. Gerhard Sporl, The Leo-Conservatives, Der Spiegel, Aug. 4, 2003.
19. McNamara Receives Pick Award Amid Protests, University of Chicago
Magazine, Summer 1979, at 4.
20. Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot (1993); Robert S. McNamara, In
Retrospect (1995). | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
