| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 11:01 am Post subject: |
| Obama Steers Toward Endless War With Islam
Posted By Michael Scheuer On May 19, 2009
http://original.antiwar.com/scheuer/2009/05/19/obama-steers-toward-endless-war-with-islam/
In just over 100 days, President Obama is on the verge of ensuring that militant Islam’s war on America will be waged for decades to come and its forces will never suffer manpower or money shortages. How did he accomplish so much in some little time? He simply behaved as all U.S. political leaders behave; that is, as an ignorant and arrogant interventionist.
Let us take the ignorant part first. Since Jan. 20, Obama and his band of Israel-Firsters have shown the Muslim world – moderate, conservative, radical, and fanatic – that George W. Bush was no one-off fluke, that Democrats intend to wage war on Islam just like the Republicans. How so? Well, look at Obama’s decisions and actions. They can only be explained by accepting that the new president is ignorant of our Islamist foes, either by choice or because the ability to read is not required to graduate at Harvard.
For 13 years, Osama bin Laden, his lieutenants, their allies, and numerous anti-Islamist commentators across the Middle East have patiently, repeatedly, and explicitly explained to the bipartisan U.S. governing elite and its media and academic acolytes that the Islamists attacking America do not give a tinker’s damn about its lifestyle, liberties, freedoms, or elections. Orally and in print, U.S. leaders have been told what motivates the Islamists’ war on America is the U.S. government’s foreign policies in the Muslim world. Foremost among these are U.S. support for Muslim tyrannies, the U.S. military’s presence in Muslim lands, and unqualified U.S. support for Israel.
And what have Obama and his advisers done with this excellent intelligence about enemy motivation, which, by the way, comes straight from the horse’s mouth? Well, they clearly ignored it, and by deciding to operate in an intelligence-free environment Obama has acted in a way that will intensify and prolong the Islamists’ war against the United States. How so?
On the tyranny front, Obama chose to go to Turkey for his first visit to the Muslim world. That country is formally governed by an Islamic party, but it is actually ruled by a thoroughly Westernized general staff ready to pounce on and dismantle the Islamic regime if its gets too religiously ambitious. Needless to say, Turkey is regarded by many Muslims as having long ago sold its Islamic soul by joining the "Christian" NATO alliance.
Obama then proceeded to acknowledge America’s oil vassalage to Saudi Arabia when, on being introduced, he bowed to Saudi King Abdullah, the master of the Saudi police state. The president also chose to speak his first televised words to Muslims in an interview on al-Arabiya television, the mouthpiece of the Saudi tyranny.
Obama next said that he will go to Egypt to address Muslims in a speech he promised during the presidential campaign. This visit will show Obama prating about the glories of secular democracy and the peacefulness of Islam while standing cheek-by-jowl with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, chief warden of the Muslim world’s premier police state.
On the military side, Obama has announced plans to send 21,000 more U.S. troops to what Muslims call "the defiant land of jihad, Afghanistan." The arrival of those troops – too few to win but enough to slow our defeat – will be portrayed by al-Jazeera, the BBC, and especially the Saudis’ anti-American shills at al-Arabiya as a brutal re-invasion of Afghanistan.
Obama was silent while Israel invaded and wrecked Gaza last winter; has appointed an IDF veteran as his chief of staff – think of the espionage potential in that move; has watched the proliferation of Israeli settlements; and has re-imposed sanctions on Syria and kept war with Iran on the front burner. His Justice Department has also exempted from prosecution Israel-First Americans and their agents in the Congress.
Like former president Bush, then, Obama has kept himself ignorant of the Islamists’ motivation and is playing directly into their hands; indeed, bin Laden, with all his road-building skills, could not pave a smoother path to hell for America. In taking this tack, Obama also displays the abiding arrogance that permeates our governing elite, an attitude that causes them to believe that both Muslims and Americans are stupid. If you doubt this, listen to the sophomoric words of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as he tries to make sure that no one looks behind the curtain of Mubarak’s tyranny when Obama speaks in Egypt:
"[T]his isn’t a speech to leaders. This is a speech to many, many people and a continuing effort by this president and this White House to demonstrate how we can work together to ensure the safety and security and the future well-being through hope and opportunity of the children of this country and of the Muslim world."
Well, Mr. Gibbs, as one of Obama’s predecessors once said, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Elected on a pledge to end Bush’s wars, Obama has instead ensured their extension by actions sure to further inflame Islamists and, indeed, most Muslims governed by royal, military, or elected-for-life tyrants. As it becomes clear that Obama’s administration is miring America deeper in a war with Islam that benefits only Israel, he and his advisers will repeat the mantra long intoned by Israeli politicians: "We tried our best to better relations with Islam, but we were rebuffed and so now Americans must soldier on in endless wars." This will be a lie. Obama may use softer rhetoric, but he is loyal to the status quo interventionism Washington practices no matter which party holds power.
The only redeeming aspect of Obama’s 100-plus-day foreign-policy debacle is that his deceit is about played out. He will fool no Muslims. His courting of Westernized Turkish generals, bowing to King Abdullah, and joining Mubarak in a cheer for freedom will tell Muslims all they need to know about U.S. intentions in their region. Likewise, Obama’s expanding war in Afghanistan and his kowtowing to Israel and American Israel-Firsters will give the lie to his claim that Washington is now an honest broker in the Middle East.
Americans will be slower off the mark than Muslims, but they will soon see that Democrats share the Republicans’ eagerness to wage unnecessary wars at the cost of their children and taxes. The inevitable need for more troops and money to stave off U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, the increased Islamist attacks on U.S. interests at home and abroad, and – most of all – the unraveling of "success" in Iraq (which, in turn, will prevent a U.S. withdrawal that would be lethal to Israel) will be seen by Americans for what they are: the price of an ignorant, arrogant interventionism that is ruining not only America’s economy and domestic cohesion, but their kids’ future prosperity and security. At this point, a long overdue foreign-policy debate can begin. It will give Americans a last chance to realign the republic’s foreign policy with the tenets of Washington’s Farewell Address and, in so doing, forever break the corrupting power of the Israel-Firsters, individuals who Washington uncannily described in 1796 as "ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens … [who] betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country."
Pray to God this occurs before a cynical, racist Benjamin Netanyahu presents Obama with a fait accompli that drags 300 million Americans into Israel’s war against Iran.
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US Support of Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11 as well (look up 'Israel as a terrorist's motivation in the index of James Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book and access the 'What Motivated the 9/11 Hijackers?' youtube linked on the upper right side of http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM as well):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/05/the-gorilla-in-the-room-is-us-support-for-israel.php
James Bamford included 9/11 motivation question at the bottom of the following URL (USS Liberty survivors Phil Tourney and Ron Kukal had their questions posted and answered there by Bamford too): ... Read More
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/ask.html
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The Israel lobby is aiming to soften up US public opinion for an attack on Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2009/05/13/war-with-iran-real-risk-according-to-former-cia-operative-page-109.php | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 2:01 am Post subject: Ex-AIPACer Weissman comes out hard against military action i |
| http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=252
Ex-AIPACer Weissman comes out hard against military action in Iran
By Daniel Luban
In March, former AIPAC chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield wrote a very interesting piece for the New Jersey Jewish News. In it, he revealed that although AIPAC publicly professed support for the Oslo peace process in the 1990s, it was secretly coordinating with then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and working behind the scenes to sabotage the process. By illustrating AIPAC’s willingness to work against the policies of both U.S. and Israeli governments when they proved insufficiently hawkish, Bloomfield noted, this information could “not only validate AIPAC’s critics, who accuse it of being a branch of the Likud, but also lead to an investigation of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
Bloomfield had another interesting piece in Tuesday’s Jerusalem Post, in which he interviewed AIPAC’s former top Iran analyst Keith Weissman. Weissman, of course, is best known for his role in the recently-dropped “AIPAC Two” espionage case, which revolved around accusations that he and AIPAC political director Steve Rosen received classified information from Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin and passed it to reporters and Israeli embassy officials. Franklin pled guilty in 2006 and was sentenced to over 12 year in prison, but this month government prosecutors decided to drop charges against Rosen and Weissman after concluding that they would be unlikely to win convictions.
Now that he is out from under the espionage charges, Weissman is free to speak his mind, and in his interview with Bloomfield he attacks the Iran hawks (including, implicitly, his former bosses at AIPAC) in startlingly blunt terms. The whole thing is worth reading, but I’ve included a few excerpts below the fold.
First, Weissman attacks the hawks’ premise that military action would be effective:
There’s no assurance an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities - even if all of them could be located - would be anything more than a temporary setback, Weissman told me. Instead, a military strike would unify Iranians behind an unpopular regime, ignite a wave of retaliation that would leave thousands dead from Teheran to Tel Aviv, block oil exports from the Persian Gulf and probably necessitate a ground war, he said.
He also attacks the idea, propagated by Netanyahu among others, that Iran’s rulers are a “messianic apocalyptic cult” and therefore undeterrable:
Weissman said Israel’s worries about Iran getting a nuclear weapon are understandable, but despite some of the rhetoric coming out of Teheran, the Iranian leaders “are not fanatics and they’re not suicidal. They know that Israel could make Iran glow for many years.”
He endorses the Obama administration’s argument that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front is necessary for progress on the Iranian front, and attacks Netanyahu’s claim that the Iranian threat is sufficient to unite Israel with the so-called “moderate Arab states”:
Trying to separate the issues, even refusing to endorse the two-state approach, “is part of the sophistry of people like [Binyamin] Netanyahu who want to avoid confronting the peace process,” he said. “Iran’s ability to screw around in the Israel-Arab arena would be severely impaired by pressing ahead on the Palestinian and Syrian tracks instead of looking for excuses not to.”
Finally, he argues that the U.S. and Israel will “have to end up accepting some kind of peaceful Iranian nuclear energy program - and they actually need it; it’s already too late to stop it entirely.”
Weissman’s apostasy on the Iran issue puts him much closer to the likes of Roger Cohen than to his former compatriots at AIPAC. It will be interesting to see whether the neoconservatives who rallied to his defense during the AIPAC Two affair will now try to bury him the same way they have tried to bury Cohen. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 4:14 pm Post subject: DEBORCHGRAVE Commentary: Loose nukes terrorism |
| http://www.upi.com/Emerging_Threats/2009/05/29/Commentary-Loose-nukes-terrorism/UPI-30621243570082/
Commentary: Loose nukes terrorism
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large
Published: May 29, 2009
WASHINGTON , May 28 (UPI) -- Is the world more dangerous today than it was at the height of the Cold War? Anyone who's still anyone in the field of nuclear arms control has weighed in with a resounding "yes." North Korea 's second nuclear test, followed by a renunciation of the 1953 armistice agreements and more missile firings, is the latest red flag on a dark nuclear horizon. Nuclear terrorism, unthinkable during the Cold War, is now the most immediate fear of the experts.
Whether this is an ailing petulant North Korean toddler throwing his nuclear teddy bear out the stroller to gain the attention he craves, or a sick, paranoid dictator currying favor with his aging, bemedaled generals to ensure a smooth succession to the hermit throne for one of his sons, may never be known. The only power that has any influence over Kim Jong Il is China . But their leaders are reluctant to wield it lest they provoke the total collapse of the Dear Leader's gulag.
That is also South Korea 's main concern. A sudden power vacuum -- or a bloody struggle for power -- would make the bill for German reunification -- $1 trillion over 10 years -- seem like chump change next to Korean reunification. East Germany had an industrial and social infrastructure; North Korea would have to build from the ground up in every field of human endeavor.
Korea is just one of the nuclear nightmares now haunting the world stage. Pakistan , in the throes of near-civil war, is feverishly adding to its nuclear arsenal of between 80 and 100 weapons. Former head of the Pakistani civil service turned pundit Roedad Khan wrote:
"These are critical days in Pakistan . There is no steady hand on the tiller of government. The survival of the country, its sovereignty, its stunted democracy, its hard-won independent judiciary, all are on the line. In these dangerous times, anything is possible. I shall not be surprised at any event that may happen. The country is gripped by fear and uncertainty. … The ship of state is decrepit and leaky. The sea is turbulent. The captain has … no compass. The crew is inexperienced. If the nation doesn't wake up, we will all go down like the Titanic. History will remember both that (President) Zardari failed to hear the warning bells and the politicians failed to ring them loud enough."
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen says he is satisfied that Pakistan 's nukes are under a goof-proof, fail-safe system and that warheads and their missile delivery vehicles are stored in separate places in different parts of a country of 175 million Muslims. But no U.S. officer has been allowed to see any of the storage sites. Pakistani officers ask, "You haven't let us see how yours are stored and safeguarded, so why should we let you see ours?"
More worrisome for Western intelligence services is the Pakistani nuclear establishment in Kahuta, 36 miles from Islamabad . Created by How-I-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan, the super-secret Khan Research Laboratories and missile-building facility employs some 7,000 nuclear engineers and scientists, and enriches enough plutonium to produce about six nuclear weapons a year.
Dr. "Strangelove" Khan peddled nuclear secrets to America 's enemies -- North Korea (in exchange for missile technology) and Iran (for big bucks) -- and is idolized as a national hero. Presented with the CIA's evidence against A.Q. Khan, former President Pervez Musharraf placed him under house arrest after he made a groveling public confession on television -- in English, not in Urdu. But Musharraf never allowed any contact with American intelligence officials.
Recently exonerated, with apologies, by the Supreme Court, the former metallurgist still has a huge following as a national hero second only to the nation's founder, Ali Jinnah. In Kahuta, many of the buildings are named after him. And the CIA and MI6 have a hard time keeping tabs on possible leakage of nuclear materials to al-Qaida, still based in Pakistan 's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and their Taliban insurgent allies, now active in Pakistan 's four provinces and over most of Afghanistan .
That leaves Iran 's nuclear ambitions as another red flag on a troubled geopolitical horizon that makes the world far less safe than it ever was during the Cold War. A.Q. Khan began helping the mullahs with nuclear know-how almost 30 years ago. Shortly after the clerics kicked out the late Shah's pro-Western monarchy in early 1979, the supreme leader, Ayatollah ("Sign of God") Ruhollah Khomeini, gave his benediction to a nuclear weapons future. The Shah told this reporter Iran would one day be a full-fledged nuclear power, and when he went into exile, Iran had 10 nuclear reactors on order -- five from the United States and five from Western Europe .
Iran 's nukes are also pulling Israel 's new Netanyahu government and the Obama administration apart. For the first time since 1956, when President Eisenhower ordered Israel , France and Britain out of their occupation of the Suez Canal, U.S. and Israeli strategic interests are no longer seen as one and the same.
For Israel , Jewish settlements in the West Bank have nothing to do with Iran 's secret nuclear weapons program. A majority of Israelis say Iran 's coming nuclear attractions constitute an existential crisis for the survival of a Jewish state. For President Obama, Israel 's creeping annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is making a Palestinian state impossible, which, in turn, leads to what Jordan 's King Abdullah predicts will be another war in 2010.
Israel 's new strategic affairs minister, Moshe Ya'alon, minced no words: "Settlement construction will not be halted," and " Israel will not allow the U.S. to dictate its policy." Binyamin Netanyahu's new team is also confident the U.S. Congress would never allow Obama to make aid to Israel conditional on a settlement freeze, let alone dismantling 160 major colonies that house some 300,000 Jews. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
