| Author | Message | | dangerousdna | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:24 am Post subject: |
| http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24341.shtml
Owning the World – The Great Illusion
By Siv O'Neall
Apr 16, 2007, 06:34
In the sixties and seventies, a group of right-wingers in the United States formed a society of vindictive and power hungry men who thought they could reinvent reality. Initially they received little notice and operated inside the American Enterprise Institute; that think tank became the womb for these megalomaniacs and their monstrous ambition of remaking the world. Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were among them and the movement was to turn into a preposterous beast. The group called themselves Neoconservatives although they were hardly conservatives in the traditional sense and were very much out there on a new and tenuous limb.
As the group assumed greater visibility, they established their goal as the creation of an artificial world which the U.S. empire would rule single-handedly. Ignoring history, they were set on creating an illusory world, one where they alone would set the rules, decide who would run big corporations, who would dominate the world scene, who would control the enormous oil wealth of the Middle East and Central Asia, who would dictate the fate of the world – without taking into consideration the ambitions of the rest of the world or the aspirations of human beings. This virtual universe began to turn into a frightening reality decades later when these men managed to seize power. And they did this through manipulating the Supreme Court into appointing a clown as President, a marionette to serve as their front man. The clown didn't have to do anything other than smirk and occasionally lift his hand in a fist; they knew that would be enough to impress the world and, in particular, the American people. Oh yes, and he would pretend to be one of the people, just like your cousin Dave or your next-door neighbor.
These men shared the illusion that all that needed to be done to control the world forever was to attack and occupy the nations that were in the way of world-wide domination. In view of the unequaled military and economic power of the United States, nobody would be able to resist or object. The United Nations was irrelevant, the industrialized world and the developing world were irrelevant; the only relevance was the military power of the United States.
So they made a plan to play the world as though it were a game of chess. This was to be an illusory world where human beings didn't count, where nationalism didn't exist. The outcome was certain before the first pawn was moved. Opponents were going to fall, they thought, like so many chessmen before the king; the fact that the king is vulnerable was not taken into consideration. This was a gambit to grab control of the world’s riches; nobody was to know what hit them until everything was in the hands of mighty U.S. corporations.
The field is open
When the Soviet Union was unmasked as being merely a mouse that roared rather than a fearful dragon, the Neoconservatives saw the opening they had awaited; the United States could now take over the running of the planet.
They had lost their most valuable asset, the cold war that had justified the arms race all by itself. But now, in their megalomania, they saw the chance to enlarge the U.S. empire to previously unheard of greatness. The groundwork had been laid by presidents Reagan and Clinton but with their clown prince in the White House, they seized upon the events of 9/11 to solidify control of the newly unipolar world.
The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) has been built to provide a gospel for these armchair warriors and its dogma assured there was no limit to the aggression the U.S. empire would permit itself to undertake. America the great, America the morally upstanding, America the invincible. They saw the world as clearly defined by good versus evil; America was all good. But to move PNAC forward, an enemy had to be created. September 11 came to the rescue.
Under cover of a 'war on terrorism' and 'national security', the now-ruling clique could count on solid levels of cooperation from people who had not previously been part of the Neocon junta. Generals and civilians played the game, willingly to begin with, and the Neocons knew they could count on that so long as the game could be made to appear as if the U.S. had the upper hand. A war on terrorism provided the perfect tool; such a war can never be won, so the basis was in place for an eternal war. That was all that was needed to make the arms manufacturers happy and keep business moving; the economy would take care of itself. Or so they thought.
They believed the best way of winning over one's enemies would be to own them. Or to dominate them by military and economic means, if needed. One easy way of dealing with enemies would be to convert most of the peoples of the planet to the American way of life. The spread of America’s so-called culture, which had started right after World War II first in Europe and Japan, seemed to be a propitious way of tilling the ground for the planned American empire that was going to take shape. Military aggression might be needed in some cases, but always there would be insidious propaganda. The cultural domination, if thorough enough, might alleviate any need for the military to complete the task, or at least soften the blow on masses no longer culturally resistant to a U.S. invasion. Once the U.S. was allowed to install military bases on foreign land, the end was achieved and the empire could spread its tentacles to the next client state. The U.S. now needs Europe to play their ball game. And so they have eagerly pushed for the formation of an EU bloc, which is wholeheartedly set on playing the neoliberal game.
The Neocon grand scheme, which took root firmly in the 1990s as the Republicans were all set on a long-term plan to outsmart the Democrats, was clearly with the intention of taking over the world. They would begin with a takeover of the United States to begin with; they intended never to let go of this supremacy. 'Pax Americana' would rule the world. So simple. The United States would own the world economically or militarily; in either case, the goal would be achieved.
Neoliberalism, the prevailing economic system today, has served well in the hands of the unipolar megalomaniacs who have reached out greedily into all the corners of the planet. In a parallel way, there has been a gradual replacement of native culture by American standards. Even in cultures traditionally very different from the United States, such as India and the countries of south-east Asia, an American-tainted way of life is emerging.
The cultural crusaders hit a snag
Gradually converting people into Americans has worked to a certain extent in some regions of the world; but, in others, nationalism has proved stronger than the Neocons anticipated. In fact, nationalist instincts seem to have been left out of their vision altogether, a phenomenon outside their narrow understanding of human nature. They had set up their virtual game with no regard for or even consideration of human feelings and aspirations.
Their credo was that the world would love them for their 'freedom'. They utterly failed to grasp that the freedom people want is to live their own lives, in their own particular ways, even if that way was not seen as democracy.
The fact that 'Pax Americana' actually stands for eternal war was not supposed to be so obvious as it is. We were all meant to be taken in by the Orwellian Newspeak; when the Neocons say ‘peace’ we are supposed to feel secure and protected. However, the 'freedom' that they are selling to the world has finally been discredited as a hollow word.
What the Moslem countries care most about is not getting democracy installed, but simply living secure lives, having jobs and a functioning infrastructure, peaceful living, basic civic rights, a working educational system, decent health care. In the days of Saddam Hussein, when political assassinations were a routine occurrence, the majority of Iraqis still had the life they only dream of now and today many are actually looking back on those days with some regret.
Where has the megalomania taken us?
As the U.S. has deviously moved to swallow every continent on the planet, what is becoming increasingly clear is that the neoliberal economic system does not serve anyone except, for a limited period of time, the upper crust of society, the corporate leaders who are awash in obscene wealth. They have profited from the stranglehold they have on developing countries; and now the poverty that is increasing all over the world, even in the so-called rich world, has reached proportions that one day soon will topple the neoliberal structure. Their inhuman and shortsighted economic game will be exposed for what it is – a totally inhuman game to profit the very few under a false pretext of eradicating poverty in the world at large.
The immense greed and megalomania and the grotesque lack of vision of our alleged leaders is about to bring on an implosion of the U.S. power structure. The economic game has been played so poorly and so viciously that the United States will soon be bankrupt, living on the goodwill of creditor countries, mainly China and Japan. So while it still seems to some as if the United States is getting away with its attempted take-over of the world’s resources and the control of the world, the structure is actually highly unstable and as we are seeing it reach into the sky, its wheels are sinking into the mud.
A light in the dark
Most importantly, as the U.S. believes it's winning on all fronts, there is, in the midst of this merciless profiteering by the imperial corpocracy, a clear beacon of hope for a different future – on the great continent of Latin America. Here, one country after another is releasing themselves from the shackles of dependence on the United States, and freeing themselves from the bondage of U.S. and European-centered corporations which were, until recently, stealing the natural resources of Latin America. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are seeing the end of their power to gobble up and destroy. Poor people are clamoring for a voice and it seems as if they have found it.
The United States power structure is falling apart in the Middle East from lack of insight and vision on the part of the madmen who believe they are running the world. At the same time, there is hope that Latin America will take the lead towards independence from their giant northern neighbor. We put our faith in Latin America and hope its resurgence and resistance will spell doom for the already tottering megalomaniac that is the United States of America.
The virtual world that the Neocons have constructed has very little to do with the real world. It is doomed to be shown up in all its artificial light, wearing a grimace for a face and a cleft foot. | |  | | Ilana_Halevy | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:27 am Post subject: |
| | Pisslam and Democracy like electricity + water. | | | | DanielDives | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:29 am Post subject: |
| | And you’re like a leaking diesel fuel tank next to a burning candle. It brings entire buildings down. | | | | dangerousdna | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:33 am Post subject: |
| http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/2007/04/soros-slams-aipac.html
Soros Slams AIPAC
Sunday, April 15, 2007 9:19 p.m. EDT
The billionaire investor George Soros has added his voice to a heated but little-noticed debate over the role of Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy in a way critics say hurts U.S. national interests and stifles debate.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israel affairs, echoed arguments that have fueled a passionate debate conducted largely in the rarefied world of academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the U.S. Jewish community.
"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said.
AIPAC has consistently declined comment on such charges, but many of its supporters have been vocal in dismissing them. Historian Michael Oren, speaking at AIPAC's 2007 conference in March, said the group was not merely a lobby for Israel. "It is the embodiment of a conviction as old as this (American) nation itself that belief in the Jewish state is tantamount to belief in these United States," he said in a keynote speech.
The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953.
AIPAC now has more than 100,000 members and is rated one of the most influential special interest groups in the United States, its political clout comparable with such lobbies as the National Rifle Association.
Its annual conference in Washington attracts a Who's Who of American politics, both Republicans and Democrats.
UNWAVERING SUPPORT
Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote.
No other lobby group has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy so far from the U.S. national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote.
Once considered an honest broker in the Middle East, the United States is now seen in much of the Arab world as an unquestioning backer of Israel, according to international opinion polls.
Peace moves have been at a near-standstill since the failure of Israeli-Palestinian talks in 2000 at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. The Bush administration, accused by the Arab world of relative neglect, has said it hopes to promote peace in its final two years despite the political weakness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
The two academics said that pressure from Israel and its lobby in Washington played an important role in President George W. Bush's decision to attack Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.
Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the U.S. publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.
It has been drawing criticism that ranged from shoddy scholarship to anti-Semitism, chiefly from conservative fellow academics and political supporters of the present relationship between Washington and Israel.
In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."
That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.
GOING MAINSTREAM
Mearsheimer and Walt are now working on expanding their article into a book -- to be published in September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The company has not commented on online reports that it paid the two authors a $750,000 advance and plans to print one million copies.
Another mainstream publisher, Simon and Schuster, already discovered that it not only is it possible to publish criticism of Israel but it can also be good for the bottom line.
Former President Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" shot up the bestseller lists after its publication last November, stayed there for more than three months and is still selling well.
It had an initial print run of 300,000 copies and there are now 485,000 copies in print, said Victoria Meyer, a spokeswoman for Simon and Schuster.
Carter's book and its reference to apartheid provoked angry reactions -- more in the United States than in Israel, where leftists opposed to the occupation of the West Bank have been accusing the government of apartheid practices for years and where the word has lost its shock value.
In response to charges of bias and anti-Semitism, Carter said he wanted to provoke a discussion of issues debated routinely and freely in Israel but rarely in the United States.
"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times during a tour to promote his book. "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."
According to Oren, the pro-AIPAC historian, the Carter book and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper had the same "insidious thesis" and suffered from the same flaw -- ignoring oil as a driving element in U.S. policies on the Middle East. | | | | dangerousdna | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:41 am Post subject: |
| http://www.pacifica.org/index.php?option=com_programguide&op=segment-page&segment_id=285&Itemid=1
"From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq": Craig Unger on How the Neoconservatives Are Pushing For An Attack on Iran
Related Topics:
Craig Unger, Current Events, George W Bush, Iran, Iraq War, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Neoconservative, War On Terror
Other segments from this show:
"From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq": Craig Unger on How the Neoconservatives Are Pushing For An Attack on Iran
New York Times Trumpets Pentagon's Claims Over Iran Sending Bombs to Iraq
Sen. Hillary Clinton Refuses to Acknowledge Making Mistake Over Voting for Iraq War & Says No Options Should Be Taken Off The Table on Iran
“Once again, neocon ideologues have been flogging questionable intelligence about W.M.D.," Unger writes. "Once again, dubious Middle East exile groups are making the rounds in Washington—this time urging regime change in Syria and Iran. Once again, heroic new exile leaders are promising freedom." [includes rush transcript]
New allegations against Iran are heightening fears the Bush administration is planning a second war in the Persian Gulf. This weekend, administration and military officials accused the Iranian government of sending sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraq that have killed 170 coalition troops in the last three years. Military officials formally unveiled the charges at an unusual news conference in Baghdad. The officials refused to be quoted by name and barred all recording devices from the room. Reporters were shown images of weapons with serial numbers the Pentagon says originate in Iran.
The Iranian government is denying the accusations. On Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer whether Iran is sending weapons into Iraq to kill Americans.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, talking to ABC's Diane Sawyer.
Meanwhile, the top US military commander, General Peter Pace, added to growing doubts about the accusations Monday when he admitted he could not endorse them.
Gen. Peter Pace: "Gen. Peter Pace: "We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this. It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."
General Peter Pace, speaking in Australia. The Bush administration is insisting the new allegations do not signify a build-up towards war. In an interview with C-Span Monday, President Bush defended the White House pressure on Iran and mocked speculation of a possible US attack.
President Bush: “I guess my reaction to all the noise about, you know, ‘He wants to go to war’ is, first of all, I don’t understand the tactics, and I guess I would say it’s political."
Amid these new developments, a new article in Vanity Fair magazine says the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that led to the Iraq war is being repeated today. The article says: “Once again, neocon ideologues have been flogging questionable intelligence about W.M.D. Once again, dubious Middle East exile groups are making the rounds in Washington—this time urging regime change in Syria and Iran. Once again, heroic new exile leaders are promising freedom."
The article is called "From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq." Craig Unger is the author of the piece. He joins me here in the firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!
Craig Unger, journalist and author. His latest article appears in Vanity Fair. It's called "From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq." He is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties." | | | | dangerousdna | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:55 am Post subject: |
| http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/101209.html
Judge keeps lobbyist trial open
The judge in the classified information trial of two former AIPAC staffers threw out a prosecution request to keep significant portions of the trial secret from the public.
The government proposal "closes significant parts of this trial and fails to pass constitutional muster," federal judge T.S. Ellis III ruled Monday in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va.
The government had proposed using codes to keep information secret from the public and a system that the judge said was overly confusing for the jury. The ruling was a victory for a number of First Amendment protection groups and media outlets who had filed an amicus brief. Ellis said the government proposal would have been unprecedented in its scope.
Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran policy analyst, face trial on charges of receiving and relaying classified information. The trial is set to start June 4, almost two years after they were indicted.
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of AMCHA, a Jewish organization that also filed an amicus brief at the hearing, welcomed the ruling.
"How do they propose to close the court?" Herzfeld said of the prosecution. "Is this Soviet Russia?" | | | | dangerousdna | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:00 am Post subject: |
| http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=10826
April 17, 2007
Is Cheney Right About the Democrats?
by Ray McGovern
The rhetoric over recent days and this morning makes it clear that Vice President Dick Cheney is still in charge of Iraq policy. He seems supremely confident that the Democrats can be intimidated into giving the White House the only thing it really wants – enough money to stave off defeat until President George W. Bush and Cheney are safely out of office. That, of course, is also what lies behind the "temporary surge" in troop strength.
Was Defense Secretary Robert Gates being naive or disingenuous on Jan. 11, when he appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee and addressed the "surge?"
"I don't think anybody has a definite idea about how long the surge would last. I think for most of us, in our minds, we're thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years."
I know Gates; he is not naive. And whatever the relative merits of positions on a policy issue, neither he nor anyone else in the small coterie of presidential advisers is likely to stand up to Cheney. The $64 question is whether the Democrats will. To me, that appears a long shot.
On CBS' Face the Nation yesterday, Cheney could barely suppress a smirk in expressing confidence that the Democrats in the end will cave in and, as he put it, "not leave America's fighting forces in harm's way without the resources they need to defend themselves." And yes, the vice president went on to reassure viewers – against all evidence to the contrary – "We are making progress."
While our corporate media remains allergic to analyzing the administration's true intentions, Democrats cannot fail to see the White House game for what it is. Will they be frightened into acquiescing in the certain deaths of 1,000 to 1,500 more American troops already "in harm's way," and the wounding of several times that number – not to mention the mounting casualties among Iraqis?
It appears they will.
While some Democrats in Congress have shown backbone since becoming the majority, key members like Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin of Michigan seem willing to acquiesce in giving Cheney and Bush funding to continue the war, no matter what. On April 8, right after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would cosponsor legislation cutting off all funding for combat troops next March, Levin undercut Reid by telling ABC's This Week, "We're not going to vote to cut the funding, period. … We're not going to cut off funding for the troops. We shouldn't cut off funding for the troops. … We're going to vote for a bill that funds the troops, period. We're going to fund the troops. We always have."
Do you want me to repeat that?
Levin is a smart fellow, but his progressive credentials have been tarnished by his caving in on funding for an unworkable National Missile Defense project, by his working out an unsavory compromise with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on depriving detainees of rights formerly guaranteed them by the U.S. Constitution, and now this.
What would prompt Levin to preempt his own majority leader? One possible explanation might be found in the chutzpah-laden admonitions coming from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) cheerleaders for Cheney, who do not disguise their fervor for the U.S. continuing the war in Iraq. Their gratuitous warnings at last month's AIPAC meeting in Washington that U.S. politicians not show "weakness" on Iraq spring from their conviction that withdrawal of U.S. troops would make the neighborhood more dangerous for Israel. (Israeli politicians should have thought of that before goading Bush and Cheney into attacking Iraq in the first place.)
Levin has received more money from AIPAC than any other senator. It seems an open question whether he is influenced more by the money or by a penchant – akin to that of Republican "neoconservatives" – to see little or no daylight between what they perceive to be Israel's interests and those of the United States.
Perhaps there is a simpler explanation. If there is, Levin owes it to us. Yesterday he waffled some more, telling Fox News Sunday that, if the president vetoes a troop withdrawal date, Congress will try to approve a bill with "some very strong, clear, statement about the Iraqis needing to meet our benchmarks, and consequences if they don't."
Right. That is sure to work with Bush, Cheney, and Iraqi leaders, who continue to play senior U.S. officials like a violin. If that is the kind of cowardly "compromise" Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accommodate to after talking with the president on Wednesday, let everyone know that they do so over the dead bodies of countless thousands more Americans and Iraqis.
No Give From Bush
President Bush was well-scripted for his White House East Room performance this morning, at which he used the bereaved spouses and children of fallen troops as a backdrop to repeat his familiar bromides for continued war in Iraq. The well-worn rhetorical flourishes were all there, relevant or not: two shameless allusions to Sept. 11 (as if that had anything to do with Iraq); the need to fight over there, "so that we don't have to face [the terrorists] where you live;" refusal to countenance "arbitrary dates" or an "artificial timetable" for "precipitous withdrawal."
There was no sign in the East Room of any White House intention to compromise on key points; rather, the lines are now clearly drawn.
Immediately after the president's presentation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and two retired U.S. Army generals responded. The generals went on the offensive, showing the military strategy and tactics on Iraq, particularly the surge, to be misguided and counterproductive. Reid, however, was perceptively on the defensive. He gave pride of place to repeated assurances that "Congress is committed to fully funding the troops," adding that draft legislation gives the president $4.3 billion more than he even asked for. He then suggested, in a plaintive tone, said that the president "should listen to us." Fat chance.
Asked about Levin's unusual behavior, Reid finessed his answer, referring to the possibility of benchmarks and stressing that the president "is not going to get a bill that has nothing on it," even if he vetoes the first one. Reid added, "Senator Levin is one of my strong allies, one of my generals; I look to him for guidance and leadership.
A harbinger of Democratic cave-in on Wednesday, absent an immediate backbone transplant for Reid. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:32 am Post subject: |
| | Additional excellent posts by you, DangerousDNA.. You are such a valued poster to this message thread about AIPAC and similar.. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:33 am Post subject: |
| From:
Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2007 7:00 AM
Subject: The sailors' ordeal was a diversion
Iran: the war ahead
http://www.newstatesman.com/200704160013
John Pilger
Published 16 April 2007
The sailors' ordeal was a diversion from the bigger danger. The US and UK identified their new enemy long ago and are preparing the propaganda for the war ahead. Plus Rageh Omaar on how the Iran affair has weakened Britain's hand
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she says. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'."
It is time we in Britain stopped looking from the side. We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush-Cheney-Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America. The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (with tales of their "ordeal" almost certainly authored by the Ministry of Defence - until it got the wind up) is both a farce and a distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike. According to Russia's leading strategic thinker General Leonid Ivashov: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets . . . at least 20 such facilities need to be destroyed. Combat nuclear weapons may be used. This will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond."
And yet there is a surreal silence in Britain, save for the noise of "news" in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapse and the truth be revealed. John Bolton, formerly Bush's man at the United Nations, recently spelled out the truth: that the Bush-Cheney-Blair plan for the Middle East is "an agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension and the only way to finally capture and enslave a country that has historically thrown out its occupiers on every occasion". He was referring to Iraq, but he also meant Iran, which would be next. That is the news.
One million Iraqis fill the streets of Najaf demanding that Bush and Blair get out of their homeland - that is the news: not our nabbed sailor-spies, nor the political danse macabre of the pretenders to Blair's Duce delusions. Whether it is Gordon Brown, the paymaster of the Iraq bloodbath, or John Reid, who sent British troops to pointless deaths in Afghanistan, or any of the others who sat through cabinet meetings knowing that Blair and his acolytes were lying through their teeth, only mutual distrust separates them now. They knew about Blair's plotting with Bush. They knew about the fake 45-minute "warning". They knew about the fitting up of Iran as the next "enemy".
Declared Brown to the Daily Mail: "The days of Britain having to apo logise for its colonial history are over. We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it." In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis documents that as many as 21 million Indians died unnecessarily in famines criminally imposed by British colonial policies. Moreover, since the formal demise of that glorious imperium, declassified files make it clear that British governments have borne "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of between 8.6 million and 13.5 million people throughout the world from military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain. The historian Mark Curtis calls these victims "unpeople". Rejoice! said Margaret Thatcher. Celebrate! says Brown. Spot the difference.
Brown is no different from Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and the other warmongering Democrats he admires and who support an unprovoked attack on Iran and the subjugation of the Middle East to "our interests" - and Israel's, of course. Nothing has changed since the US and Britain destroyed Iran's democratic government in 1953 and installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, whose regime had "the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture" that was "beyond belief" (Amnesty).
True carnage
Look behind the one-way moral screen and you will dis tinguish the Blairite elite by its loathing of real democracy. They used to be discreet about this, but no more. Two examples spring to mind. In 2004, Blair used the secretive "royal prerogative" to overturn a high court judgment that had restored the very principle of human rights set out in Magna Carta to the people of the Chagos Islands, a British colony in the Indian Ocean. There was no debate. As ruthless as any dictator, Blair dealt his coup de grâce with the lawless expulsion of the islanders from their homeland, now a US military base, from which Bush has bombed Iraq and Afghanistan and will bomb Iran.
In the second example, only the degree of suffering is dif ferent. Last October, the Lancet published research by Johns Hopkins University in the US and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad which calculated that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion. Downing Street officials derided the study as "flawed". They were lying. In fact, the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, had backed the survey, describing its methods as "robust" and "close to best practice", and other government officials had secretly approved the "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones". The figure for Iraqi deaths is now estimated at close to a million - carnage equivalent to that caused by the Anglo-American economic siege of Iraq in the 1990s, which produced the deaths of half a million infants under the age of five, verified by Unicef. That, too, was dismissed contemptuously by Blair.
"This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair," wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, "is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference."
Such is the scale of the crime and of our "looking from the side". According to the Observer of 8 April, the voters' "damning verdict" on the Blair regime is expressed by a majority who have "lost faith" in their government. No surprise there. Polls have long shown a widespread revulsion to Blair, demonstrated at the last general election, which produced the second lowest turnout since the franchise. No mention was made of the Observer's own contribution to this national loss of faith. Once celebrated as a bastion of liberalism that stood against Anthony Eden's lawless attack on Egypt in 1956, the new right-wing, lifestyle Observer enthusiastically backed Blair's lawless attack on Iraq, having helped lay the ground with major articles falsely linking Iraq with the 9/11 attacks - claims now regarded even by the Pentagon as fake.
As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 11 September 2001. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts", which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oil wealth among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by US and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies.
Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East, where Opec has ensured that oil business is conducted between states. Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway is another prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as non existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with the coming American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years, IAEA inspectors have said they have been allowed to "go anywhere". The recent UN Security Council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery.
Until recently, the British were unaware that their government was one of the world's most consistent abusers of human rights and backers of state terrorism. Few Britons knew that the Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner of al-Qaeda, was sponsored by British intelligence as a means of systematically destroying secular Arab nationalism, or that MI6 recruited young British Muslims in the 1980s as part of a $4bn Anglo-American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union known as "Operation Cyclone". In 2001, few Britons knew that 3,000 innocent Afghan civilians were bombed to death as revenge for the attacks of 11 September. No Afghans brought down the twin towers, only citizens of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest arms client, which was not bombed. Thanks to Bush and Blair, awareness in Britain and all over the world has risen as never before. When home-grown terrorists struck London in July 2005, few doubted that the attack on Iraq had provoked the atrocity and that the bombs which killed 52 Londoners were, in effect, Blair's bombs.
In my experience, most people do not indulge the absurdity and cruelty of the "rules" of rampant power. They do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with double standards and the notion of approved evil, of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government.
Certainly, they would agree wholeheartedly with Robert H Jackson, chief of counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders at the end of the Second World War. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
As with Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, who dare not travel to certain countries for fear of being prosecuted as war criminals, Blair as a private citizen may no longer be untouchable. On 20 March, Baltasar Garzón, the tenacious Spanish judge who pursued Augusto Pinochet, called for indictments against those responsible for "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history" - Iraq. Five days later, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, said that Blair could one day face war-crimes charges.
These are critical changes in the way the sane world thinks - again, thanks to the Reich of Blair and Bush. However, we live in the most dangerous of times. On 6 April, Blair accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of "backing, financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". He offered no evidence, and the Ministry of Defence has none. This is the same Goebbels-like refrain with which he and his coterie, Gordon Brown included, brought an epic bloodletting to Iraq. How long will the rest of us continue looking from the side?
John Pilger's new film "The War on Democracy" will be previewed at the National Film Theatre, London SE1, on 11 May. http://www.bfi.org.uk/nft
http://www.johnpilger.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 5:57 am Post subject: Behind the Iran Crisis: The Israel Lobby's Campaign for War |
| http://www.ihr.org/news/0704_weber.shtml
Behind the Iran Crisis: The Israel Lobby's Campaign for War
An address by Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, delivered at an IHR meeting in Irvine, Califronia, on March 24, 2007. (A report on the meeting is posted here.)
In the months leading up to the March 2003 attack on Iraq, President Bush and other high-ranking US officials repeatedly warned that the Baghdad regime posed a threat to the US and the world – a threat so grave and imminent that the United States had to act quickly to bomb, invade and occupy that country.
On Sept. 28, 2002, for example, Bush said: “The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given... This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.”
Shortly before the invasion, on March 6, 2003, the President declared: “Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people... I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he’s a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives. And I’ve got good evidence to believe that. He has weapons of mass destruction... The American people know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.”
These claims were untrue. As the world now knows, Iraq had no such arsenal, and posed no threat to the US. Alarmist suggestions that the Baghdad regime was working with the al-Qaeda terror network likewise proved to be without foundation. The claims by President Bush and other high-level American officials to justify the war, and their glib assurances about how “regime change” in Iraq would usher in a new dawn of democracy and freedom throughout the region have proven disastrously wrong.
Now, four years later, something of the scale of the calamity is clear. More than 3,000 American military personnel have lost their lives, along with many tens of thousands of Iraqis. Many more have been horribly wounded and maimed. The war and the occupation have cost hundreds of billions of dollars. In Arab and Muslim countries, it has fueled intense hatred of the US, and has brought many new recruits to the ranks of anti-American terrorists. Around the world, it has generated unmatched distrust and hostility toward the United States.
A few months after the attack, President Bush denounced as “revisionists” and “revisionist historians” the skeptics who questioned his claims that the Baghdad regime had an arsenal of weapons so vast and so dangerous that the US had to act quickly to attack and occupy Iraq. On that occasion, Bush was unintentionally telling the truth. Those who question government claims, particularly wartime claims, are indeed “revisionists” – that is, thinking men and women who question dogma, propaganda and political orthodoxy.
Today, virtually the entire world is “revisionist.” Regardless of what President Bush and his friends may snidely suggest, the revisionists were and are right, and revisionism – that is, thoughtful skepticism of official claims – is an honorable and essential feature of any free society.
In recent years, awareness of the Jewish-Zionist role in the war, of the reality of Jewish-Zionist power, and of its hold on US policy, has grown everywhere – an awareness that, once grasped, is obvious and confirmed anew each day with the unfolding of events.
More prominent individuals have been willing publicly to acknowledge this power. In Britain, a veteran member of the House of Commons bluntly declared in May 2003 that Jews had taken control of America’s foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US into war. Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy and the longest-serving House member, said: “A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians… There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States.”
In Malaysia, prime minister Mahathir Mohammed declared in October 2003: “The Europeans killed six million Jews out of twelve million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”
Here in the United States, John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard, issued in March of last year a carefully written, judiciously worded and copiously referenced paper, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” which has generated wide interest and spirited discussion.
Quickly, and predictably, the paper and its authors came under fierce attack from Zionist leaders and organizations – a response that underscored one of the paper’s main points. But the critics have been outnumbered by those who have welcomed this work as a landmark event and as an important breakthrough.
In their paper, professors Walt and Mearsheimer wrote:
“For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history…
“The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East. Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure.”
Almost nothing in the Walt-Mearsheimer paper is new or original. Its main point about the dangerous role of what they call “The Lobby” is understood around the world by informed men and women who closely follow political affairs and history. The paper is significant because it was written by two scholars of eminence and stature.
Another important contribution to the growing public awareness of the power and impact of the pro-Israel lobby has been the new book by former president Jimmy Carter. In this book, entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, and in statements made in connection with the book’s appearance, Carter has spoken pointedly and critically about the pro-Israel lobby and its role in shaping US policy to support Israeli oppression and war.
Immediately following the book’s publication, the former president was predictably assailed with the usual smears, and by the usual crowd. Jewish writer David Horowitz, for one, wrote a widely-circulated essay entitled “Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar,” a vicious item that reflects his outlook and the attitude of many other pro-Israel activists.
As it happens, I had a run-in myself with David Horowitz in December, when I appeared with him as a fellow “guest,” if that’s the right word, on the nationally-broadcast radio show of Sean Hannity. I won’t go into details of that raucous appearance, except to mention that both Horowitz and Hannity were as ignorant and as bigoted as they were rude.
In recent months the most pressing international issue has been the question of a new war in the Middle East . The world is anxiously following the so-called crisis over Iran, or as Israel-firsters prefer to call it “The Iranian Threat.”
This crisis is artificial. It is every bit as phony as the one manufactured to provide a pretext for war against Iraq.
Once again our leaders prepare Americans for a new war.
Once again we are told that another country that Israel regards as an adversary is a grave threat to peace.
Once again our politicians and a compliant media present a barrage of sensational and frightening propaganda claims – claims remarkably similar to those we heard in 2002 and 2003, and from the same Israel-friendly crowd.
For more than a year now, Washington has been pressuring Iran with economic sanctions and repeated threats of military attack to back its demand that the Tehran government give up its nuclear development program.
The announcement last year that Iran had enriched a minute amount of uranium unleashed urgent calls for a preventive US military strike against that country. Officials in Washington ominously declare that “all options” are “on the table.” Vice President Cheney has said that Iran is “right at the top” of the world’s so-called dangerous countries, and he expressed the view that Israel “might well decide to act first” to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared: “The pursuit by the Iranian regime of nuclear weapons represents a direct threat to the entire international community, including to the United States and to the Persian Gulf region.”
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the US is planning military action against Iran, and that President Bush is already intent on “regime change” there. Hersh wrote that the Bush administration is stepping up clandestine activities inside Iran, and has intensified planning for a major air attack. Hersh also concluded that the White House is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.
With regard to Iran, professors Walt and Mearsheimer wrote in their paper:
“Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their existence… In late April 2003, [the Israeli daily] Ha’aretz reported that the Israeli ambassador in Washington was calling for regime change in Iran. The overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was ‘not enough’. In his words, America ‘has to follow through. We still have great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.’ The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime change in Tehran … As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent neo-conservatives made the case for going after Iran…
“The Bush administration has responded to the Lobby’s pressure by working overtime to shut down Iran’s nuclear program. But Washington has had little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any appeasement of a ‘terrorist’ regime, and hint darkly of preventive action should diplomacy fail... Israeli officials also warn they may take pre-emptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to keep Washington’s attention on the issue.
“One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the US would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but US policy would be more temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option.”
A good example of the “bevy of articles” referred to here by Walt and Mearsheimer is a prominently featured piece in the Los Angeles Times last November, entitled, “Force is the Only Answer.” Written by Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neocon associated with the pro-Israel “American Enterprise Institute” think tank, the essay begins with the sentence: “We must bomb Iran.”
In Israel, prime minister Ehud Olmert called Iran an “existential threat,” and in January the London Sunday Times reported that the Israeli government is planning to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
In December the former commander of the artillery units of Israel’s armed forces, Brigadier General Oded Tira, has been candid in calling for a US attack against Iran on behalf of the Jewish state. General Tira declared:
“President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure. We must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by Bush against Iran.”
Scott Ritter, an American who served as a senior United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, says in his new book, Target Iran: “The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby, has succeeded in exploiting the ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear armed Iran.” Ritter also writes: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”
An attack against Iran by the United States, or Israel, would be, in the absence of an imminent threat, an illegal, unilateral act of war. If undertaken by the US without a formal congressional declaration of war, such an attack would be unconstitutional. A war against Iran would serve only Israeli and Zionist interests. For everyone else, war against Iran would be a catastrophe.
For many years now, American political leaders of both parties have declared themselves staunchly committed to Israel and its security. This unparalleled devotion to Israel – which is an expression of the Jewish-Zionist grip on America’s political and cultural life – seems to have reached an apex in the current administration.
In an address to pro-Israel activists at a convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), President Bush said: “The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state.”
President Bush’s worldview is shared by Condoleezza Rice, who served as his National Security Advisor, and is now US Secretary of State. In a May 2003 interview Rice made the astounding statement that the “security of Israel is the key to security of the world.”
It’s difficult to imagine an American leader making a similar statement about any other country. Imagine a US Secretary of State saying, for example, that the “security of Nigeria is the key to security of the world.” Or, that the security of Russia, Taiwan, or Serbia, is the key to security of the world. It’s unthinkable.
President Bush, in talking about the possibility of war against Iran, has sometimes “slipped” by candidly citing Israel as the sole or primary reason for taking military action against Iran.
In an interview in February 2006, he was asked about his reaction to anti-Israel remarks by Iran’s president. Bush replied: “We will rise to Israel’s defense, if need be.” And he added, “You bet we’ll defend Israel."
In a speech in March 2006, Bush said: “Now that I’m on Iran … the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. It’s a threat to world peace; it’s a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.”
Such remarks have worried Jewish leaders – not because they do not agree with them, or because they doubt Bush’s sincerity, but because they believe that the President has been too candid, too open, in acknowledging Israel’s importance in determining American war policy. Jewish leaders are concerned that non-Jews might draw all-too-obvious conclusions from such statements.
In April 2006, the Jewish Week of New York reported: “President Bush is risking a backlash that could injure the Jewish community – and his own cause – by repeatedly citing Israel as his top rationale for possible US military conflict with Iran, Jewish leaders and Middle East analysts warned... Bush’s repeated, sometimes exclusive, focus on Israel could spark public fury against the Jewish state and Jews if US military action is accompanied by skyrocketing gas prices, terrorism at home or fallen GIs who might be seen as dying for Israel, some said.”
Another Jewish community paper, the influential Forward of New York reported in May 2006: “Jewish community leaders have urged the White House to refrain from publicly pledging to defend Israel against possible Iranian hostilities, senior Jewish activists told the Forward … [Jewish] communal leaders say that although they deeply appreciate the president’s repeated promises to come to Israel’s defense, public declarations to that effect do more harm than good.” Jewish leaders went on to express concern that such statements “could lead to American Jews being blamed for any negative consequences of an American strike against Iran.”
George W. Bush, and others in his administration, have often lectured Iran about democracy. Well, that’s pretty rich coming from a man who became president after an election in which he received fewer votes than his opponent.
Contrary to the impression given by the Bush administration and neocon propagandists, Iran was never allied with, or even friendly to, the Al Qaeda organization or the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan. In fact, in 1999 Iran almost went to war against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after Taliban fighters kidnapped and murdered nine Iranian diplomats.
In the barrage of alarmist anti-Iran and pro-war propaganda of recent months, we’ve heard a lot about how Iran is a great danger to Jews. To be sure, Jews do not have anything like the power and influence in Iran that they do here in the US, but the insinuation that Iran’s Jews are somehow terrorized or oppressed is rubbish. Jews have far more freedom in Iran than they do in several Middle East countries that are allied with the United States, such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Iran’s Jewish community of some 25,000 is represented in the nation’s parliament by a Jewish representative. There are 20 active synagogues in Tehran. The Jews of Iran, many of whom own and run successful businesses, have a standard of living that is above the country’s average.
To put this Iran “crisis” into some perspective, it’s worth noting that although Iran has not attacked another country in 200 years, it has itself repeatedly been a victim of aggression. A look at the historical record shows that Iran has at least some valid reason to be skeptical of Washington ’s policies and intentions.
In 1941, military forces of Britain and the Soviet Union, with backing from the United States, invaded and occupied Iran in flagrant violation of international law. The British and Soviet Russian occupation forces removed the government in Tehran, which was considered too sympathetic to Germany, and installed the youthful Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as the country’s Shah, or monarch.
In 1953 the United States, operating through the Central Intelligence Agency, and acting in concert with the British, organized the overthrow of the popular government of prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, and brought back to power the Shah who had briefly fled the country.
From 1953 until 1979, the United States generously supported the Shah, a ruler who became increasingly out of touch with the interests and aspirations of his people. In 1979 he was overthrown in a popular uprising, and fled into exile. An Islamic Republic was proclaimed.
In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq ordered his armed forces to invade what he regarded as a weakened and vulnerable Iran. The war started by Iraq in September 1980 lasted nearly eight years, and was one of the most destructive of the twentieth century. Casualty figures are uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million war and war-related casualties. Iran acknowledged that nearly 300,000 people died in the war, and estimates of the Iraqi dead range from 160,000 to 240,000.
The US role in that conflict was a cynical one. While publicly lamenting the bloodshed, the United States at the same time provided aid and support to Iraq. To cement that support, Donald Rumsfeld, who later served as Secretary of Defense during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, flew to Baghdad in December 1983 as a special envoy of President Reagan, to meet and shake hands with Saddam Hussein, and to reaffirm US backing in the war against Iran.
In the current US-Iran showdown, much of the world is mindful of the blatant double standard of US policy. While Washington threatens war against Iran for developing a nuclear program, it sanctions Israel ’s vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and seemingly has no problem with a nuclear-armed China, Pakistan, Russia or India.
In fact, given its geo-political position, Iran would be foolish if it did not try to develop the most effective military force possible. On its eastern border is Pakistan, which now has nuclear weapons, and Afghanistan, which is currently under the control of the military forces of a nuclear-armed United States. On Iran’s western border is Iraq, which likewise is occupied by the armed forces of a nuclear US.
In the region, the only country that currently has a nuclear weapons arsenal, that occupies territory of its neighbors, and which is in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions – is Israel.
In fact, if the United States held Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq and now Iran, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and American troops would seize Israel’s leaders and punish them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
When a society is healthy, its leaders – political, social, cultural and intellectual – speak to its citizens with honesty and candor. A sound social-political system encourages truth. In a sick and corrupt society, leaders resort to lies and deceit. And the more decayed the society, the more its leaders lie and deceive.
In our society, the official lies and deceptions are so numerous and so brazen, it’s difficult to enumerate them. I’ve already referred to its lies about the Baghdad regime in the months before the US invasion of Iraq. But it’s much worse than that.
In the aftermath of the 2001 Nine Eleven terrorist attack, for example, President Bush on national television told the world that: “America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." The next day he said that "freedom and democracy are under attack," and that the perpetrators had struck against "all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world." These are not just false statements. They are absurdly ignorant and deceptive ones.
The focus of the Walt-Mearsheimer paper, mentioned earlier, is, appropriately, the role of the Israel lobby in determining US policy in the Middle East. But this is no ordinary lobby. Its power and influence is much greater, more insidious, and more dangerous, than that of any other lobby. Far beyond determining US policy in the Middle East, it has a profound impact on every aspect of American social, political and cultural life. That’s one reason why, instead of talking about the “Israel Lobby,” I routinely speak instead of Jewish-Zionist power.
The Walt-Mearsheimer paper is much more than a trenchant analysis or persuasive critique of a particular lobby. It is implicitly a damning indictment of the American social-political system. The Jewish-Zionist grip on our nation is an expression of a profound and deeply rooted problem. Such a lobby or power – particularly one that represents the interests of a self-absorbed community that makes up no more than three or four percent of the population – could only gain such a hold on the governmental machinery of a society that is fundamentally sick and corrupt. No healthy society would permit a small minority to gain and hold such power, and wield it for its own particular interests.
The failure of virtually the entire American political and intellectual establishment to challenge this power is an expression of deep-rooted cowardice and corruption. Cowardice and corruption on such a scale is possible only in a society that is gravely ill – one that is beyond reform or redemption. This sickness is manifest not merely in the hijacking of our foreign policy, or in the corruption of our political system, but also in the squalor of our inner cities, in our nation’s high level of crime, in a culture that is ever more infantile and crass, and in the spreading vulgarity of our social life.
In every society, it is quite normal that most people are concerned with little more than the happiness, interests and well-being of themselves, their families, and their friends. In any society, only a small number of men and women have the wit and awareness to understand the social, political and cultural forces that shape the present and the future. Only a small minority has the soul or temperament to care about, and be seriously concerned for, the long-term health and well-being of the world, or even of their country.
Normally, and understandably, we expect – and have every right to expect – that our political leaders are mindful of and planning for the long-term interests of the nation. Tragically, our leaders have proven themselves grossly derelict. With very few exceptions, our political leaders – Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal – show far more concern for their own welfare and for the outcome of the next election, than for the long-term interests of our people and the world.
We seek to raise public awareness of the great issues that confront us, that impact every aspect of our lives, and which have the most profound consequences for the future. We realize, of course, that our words will reach the minds and hearts of only a few. We know that we cannot hope to match the financial resources, influence and outreach of our adversaries. We cannot hope to compete, much less offset, the great power and influence of the media giants who control most of what we read, hear and view.
Our great task is to reach those who, first, think about the present and the past, and second, who care about our future. That is, we work to reach men and women, especially younger men and women, of unusual awareness and a higher sense of responsibility – the men and women who will be the leaders of the future, who can, and, if our children and grand-children are to live in a decent world, must assume power, replacing the failed leaders who have betrayed the people’s trust.
A few of those who are here this evening have come, perhaps, out of simple curiosity, or to meet others who are attending. But most of us are here this evening because we care. We care about what is right and wrong. We care about what is true and not true.
We care about the past and, more importantly, we care about the future. We care about the world we live in. We feel a sense of responsibility for the world we’ve inherited, and for the world of the future. We want to make a difference – to make this a better world – a world that, even beyond our own lifetimes, is more just and right.
Some of us may feel a special concern for the cause of peace, mindful of the destruction, suffering, and death of war. Some may be moved by a strong concern for justice, perhaps especially for the people who have lived for decades under Zionist occupation. Some may have an unusually strong religious sensibility. Some may feel a special concern for the welfare and future of his or her own culture, race or nation, while others may feel a responsibility for the future of all mankind.
Regardless of the particular causes or principles that most move us, that are closest to our hearts, no issue is of greater urgency than breaking the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political, social and cultural life. As long as that power remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish-Zionist distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist corruption and domination of the US political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.
We are engaged in a great, global struggle – in which two distinct and irreconcilable sides confront each other. A world struggle that pits an arrogant and malevolent power that feels ordained to rule over others, on one side, and all other nations and societies – indeed, humanity itself – on the other.
This struggle is not a new one. It is the latest enactment of a great drama that has played itself out again and again, over centuries, and in many different societies, cultures and historical eras. In the past this drama played itself out on a local, national, regional, or, sometimes, continental stage. Today this is a global drama, and a global clash.
It is a struggle for the welfare and future not merely of the Middle East, or of America, but a great historical battle for the soul and future of humanity itself. A struggle that calls all of us – across the country and around the world – who share a sense of responsibility for the future of our nation, of the world, and of humankind.
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