| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 3:16 am Post subject: U. Avnery: Bush Targets Iran and Syria |
| U. Avnery: Bush Targets Iran and Syria
Uri Avnery
19.2.05
Beware of the Dog!
It is not very flattering to be paraded like a Rottweiler on a leash, whose master threatens to let him loose on his enemies. But this is our situation now.
Vice President Dick Cheney threatened a few weeks ago that if Iran continues to develop its nuclear capabilities, Israel might attack her.
This week, President George Bush repeated this threat. If he were the leader of Israel, he declared, he would have been feeling threatened by Iran. He reminded those who are a little slow that the United States has undertaken to defend Israel if there is a threat to its security.
All this adds up to a clear warning: if Iran does not submit to the orders of the US (and, perhaps, even if it does) Israel will attack it with American help, much as it attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor some 24 years ago.
The same week, something quite unexpected happened: Ariel Sharon sent the Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, packing. His successor will most probably be General Dan Halutz.
Halutz is, of course, a pilot, and one who played his part in the 1981 attack on the Iraqi reactor. If he succeeds Ya’alon, it will be the first time in the annals of the Israel Defense Forces that an airman is appointed Chief-of-Staff. That is rather curious. In the coming year, the army will be called upon to carry out a very difficult operation on land: the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements. The appointment of an Air Force general as Chief-of-Staff may hint that the IDF is planning something even more important in the air.
(Entr’act: Nobody will shed a tear at the removal of Ya’alon. As Chief-of-Staff, he bears responsibility for all the terrible things that happened in the army during the last three years, from the “killing verification” of a 13-year old girl to the “neighbor practice” – compelling a Palestinian civilian to walk in front of soldiers on their way to kill a militant. But if Ya’alon is succeeded by Halutz, it will confirm the pessimistic dictum that for every bad man removed there is an even worse one to succeed him.
For those who have forgotten: Halutz (“pioneer”, in Hebrew) aroused a public storm after the Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of a Hamas leader and killed him together with 15 civilians, including nine children. Asked what he feels when dropping such a bomb, he answered “a slight bump”, adding that he sleeps well afterwards. On the same opportunity he vilified Gush Shalom for its actions against war crimes and demanded that we be put on trial for treason.)
Back to Bush-Cheney and the Rottweiler.
When Bush came to power for the first time, the Neo-Cons laid before him a coherent plan for the extension of the American Empire in the Middle East. It contained three chapters:
One, to conquer Iraq in order to take control of its immense oil reserves and place an American garrison at the critical junction between the Caspian Sea oil and the Saudi resources.
Two, to break the Iranian regime and return Iran to the American bloc.
Three, to do the same to Syria and Lebanon. It was not yet decided whether Iran would come before Syria, or the other way round.
It might have been assumed that the experience of the American adventure in Iraq would cancel the next chapters. The Iraqi people did not receive the occupying army with flowers. The pretext for the invasion – Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction – was exposed as a blatant lie. The armed insurrection continues. The future of the Iraqi state hangs in the balance, even after the recent elections. The country may well break up into three parts, creating shock waves all around the Middle East.
Naive people believe that after all this, Bush would not risk more adventures of this kind. They are wrong.
First, because a primitive and vain person like him never admits to failure. When one of his adventures fails, this just drives him on to even more ambitious ones.
Second, the failure does indeed cost a lot of lives and destroys the infrastructure of life in Iraq, but that doesn’t matter for the planners of the operation. The main aim – establishing a permanent garrison in the country - has been achieved. Outside of Iraq, nobody is demanding that the American soldiers leave. And, whatever the acts of sabotage, the Iraqi oil is controlled by the US. The oil barons, who are the patrons of the Bush family, can be well satisfied.
The Europeans and Russian are trying to block Bush’s path. He is now going to pay a state visit to the EU and NATO, trying to convince them by sweet talk and threats to cooperate in his adventures.
Therefore, one must take seriously Bush’s and Cheney’s threats to unleash the Rottweiler. The moment they feel that the way is clear, they will give the sign to Sharon. Sharon will do his duty, in return for an American agreement to allow him to gobble up some more pieces of the Palestinian territories.
Will military action cause the regime of the Ayatollahs to collapse? I doubt it. It is, indeed, a detestable regime, but faced with an attack from the outside, especially from “Crusaders and Zionists”, the Iranian people will unite behind it. A proud people, with a glorious history like the Iranians, will not break easily.
Syria is a different target. Unlike Iraq and Iran, it has no oil resources. But without it the American Empire will not be contiguous and it is an obstacle to Israel.
In the 1967 war, Israel conquered the Golan heights, which until then were known in Israel as “the Syrian heights”. In place of many dozens of Syrian villages, which were wiped from the face of the earth, Israel settlements sprang up. The Syrians have never given up their resolve to recover their territory. In 1973, they tried to do this by war but were routed, in spite of a remarkable initial victory. Since then, the balance of military power has tilted even more in favor of Israel. Therefore, Syria is using another method: harassing Israel by proxy, by giving support to Hisbullah and radical Palestinan organizations, whose leaders reside in Damascus.
In order to make permanent its rule over the Golan heights, the Israeli government must break Syria. The neo-cons in Washington – surprise, surprise – have the same aim. The pretext: the fact that Syrian soldiers are stationed in Lebanon.
Historically, Lebanon is a part of Syria. Damascus has never resigned itself to the establishment of a separate Lebanese state by the French colonialists in the first half of the 20th century. At the most, it accepts Lebanon as a client state.
The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976, at the height of the terrible civil war there. The Muslims and Druze, with help of the PLO, were poised to conquer the Christian areas. It was the Christians (please remember!) who called upon the Syrians to come and save them. Since then, the Syrians have remained there. Many Lebanese believe that their departure would cause the civil war to break out again.
In 1982 Israel tried to dislodge them. That was the main objective of the army general staff (as distinct from then Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, whose main objective was to drive the Palestinians out). But the invasion did not achieve its aim: in the end, the Israelis were driven out and the Syrians remained.
This week, the Muslim leader Fariq al-Hariri, who lately joined the opposition, was assassinated in Beirut. It is not yet known who did it. The huge American propaganda machine, which includes the Israeli media, has pointed at the Syrians. If they are indeed guilty, it was an act of supreme folly, since it was obvious that it would help the Americans build up the Lebanese opposition and arouse a storm of anti-Syrian sentiment. It happened at exactly the right moment for anyone interested in starting a campaign against Syria, under the slogan “End the Syrian Occupation!”
There is something laughable about this demand, coming as it does from two occupying powers: the Americans in Iraq and the Israelis in Palestine. But Rottweilers are not renowned for their sense of humor, any more than those who parade them around on a leash. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 3:20 am Post subject: re: Blindly Backing Israel against Iran |
| Blindly Backing Israel against Iran
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=4884
Zionist (Israel first) Neocons Promote U.S. - Iran War:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/13/neocons-concentrate-on-promoting-u-s-iran-war.php
The following is a reply to www.antiwar.com from a retired US intel contact:
----- Original Message -----
From: Don To: backtalk@antiwar.com
Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2005 11:37 AM
Subject: Blindly Backing Israel Against Iran-- Prather
None of this has anything to do with anything except surrounding Israel with compliant puppets who can be coerced and robbed at will. Israel defines greater Israel--as granted to them by their version of God--as all lands east of the Nile, west of Iran, south of Turkey and north of the Indian Ocean. Bush is supposed to get it for them. In doing so, Bush gets land, oil, control, and water. Water is at the heart of this, not oil. As Arafat said: "Israel wants it all." Can that be any plainer? This rapacious program started in 1986 with the Likudnik-Zionist-Neocon-PNAC movement under Perle, Woflowitz, Abrams, Adelman, and about a hundred others. Ledeen has laid it all out for all to see. China and Russia are to be the last victims of this. Putin knows it and has acted to stop it. Putin's self-defense actions have angered Bush. Clearly, Bush is more Israeli than American. He always puts Israel's interests before America's. Have you noticed that Bush and bin Laden use the same language as they claim to be God's men on Earth? It is perverse and evil. We are clearly stuck between Zionazis and Islamofascists. It will be interesting to see who wins.
Don | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 12:13 pm Post subject: Even Israelis Know that the Iraq War was for Israel |
| Check out the following article as even Israelis like Uri Avnery know that the war in Iraq was for Israel (via the Zionist - Israel first- JINSA/CSP/PNAC Neoconservative traitors to America):
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04102003.html
April 10, 2003
The Night After
The Easier the Victory, the Harder the Peace
By URI AVNERY
It is now fashionable to talk about "the day after". Let's talk about the night after.
After the end of hostilities in Iraq, the world will be faced with two decisive facts:
First, the immense superiority of American arms can beat any people in the world, valiant as it may be.
Second, the small group that initiated this war--an alliance of Christian fundamentalists and Jewish neo-conservatives--has won big, and from now on it will control Washington almost without limits.
The combination of these two facts constitutes a danger to the world, and especially to the Middle East, the Arab peoples and the future of Israel. Because this alliance is the enemy of peaceful solutions, the enemy of the Arab governments, the enemy of the Palestinian people and especially the enemy of the Israeli peace camp.
It does not dream only about an American empire, in the style of the Roman one, but also of an Israeli mini-empire, under the control of the extreme right and the settlers. It wants to change the regimes in all Arab countries. It will cause permanent chaos in the region, the consequences of which it is impossible to foresee.
Its mental world consists of a mixture of ideological fervor and crass material interests, an exaggerated American patriotism and right-wing Zionism.
That is a dangerous mixture. There is in it something of the spirit of Ariel Sharon, a man who has always had grandiose plans for changing the region, consisting of a mixture of creative imagination, unbridled chauvinism and a primitive faith in brute force.
Who are the winners?
They are the so-called neo-cons, or neo-conservatives. A compact group, almost all of whose members are Jewish. They hold the key positions in the Bush administration, as well as in the think-tanks that play an important role in formulating American policy and the ed-op pages of the influential newspapers.
For many years, this was a marginal group that fostered a right-wing agenda in all fields. They fought against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and drugs. When Binyamin Netanyahu assumed power in Israel, they offered him advise on how to fight the Arabs.
Their big moment arrived with the collapse of the Twin Towers. The American public and politicians were in a state of shock, completely disoriented, unable to understand a world that had changed overnight. The neo-cons were the only group with a ready explanation and a solution. Only nine days after the outrage, William Kristol (the son of the group's founder, Irving Kristol) published an Open Letter to President Bush, asserting that it was not enough to annihilate the network of Osama bin Laden, but that it was also imperative to "remove Saddam Hussein from power" and to "retaliate" against Syria and Iran for supporting Hizbullah.
Following is a short list of the main characters. (If it bores you, skip to the next section).
The Open Letter was published in the Weekly Standard, founded by Kristol with the money of ultra-right press mogul Rupert Murdoch, who donated $ 10 million to the cause. It was signed by 41 leading neo-cons, including Norman Podhoretz, a Jewish former leftist who has become an extreme right-wing icon, editor of the prestigious Encounter magazine, and his wife, Midge Decter, also a writer, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Studies, Robert Kagan, also of the Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, and, of course, Richard Perle.
Perle is a central character in this play. Until recently he was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board of the Defense Department, which also includes Eliot Cohen and Devon Cross. Perle is a director of the Jerusalem Post, now owned by extreme right-wing Zionists. In the past he was an aide to Senator Henry Jackson, who led the fight against the Soviet Union on behalf of the Jews who wanted to leave. He is a leading member of the influential right-wing American Enterprise Institute. Lately he was obliged to resign from his Defense Department position, when it became known that a private corporation had promised to pay him almost a million dollars for he benefit of his influence in the administration.
That Open Letter was, in effect, the beginning of the Iraq war. It was eagerly received by the Bush administration, with members of the group already firmly established in some of its leading positions. Paul Wolfowitz, the father of the war, is No. 2 in the Defense Department, where another friend of Perle's, Douglas Feith, heads the Pentagon Planning Board. John Bolton is State Department Undersecretary. Eliot Abrams, responsible for the Middle East in the National Security Council, was connected with the Iran-Contra-Israel scandal. The main hero of the scandal, Oliver North, sits in the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, together with Michael Ledeen, another hero of the scandal. Headvocates total war not only against Iraq, but also against Israel's other enemies, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department.
Most of these people , together with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are associated with the "Project for the New American Century", which published a White Paper in 2002, with the aim 'to preserve and enhance this 'American peace'"--meaning American control of the world.
Meyrav Wurmser (Meyrav is a chic new Israeli first name) is Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute. She also writes for the Jerusalem Post and is co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute that is, according to the London Guardian, connected with Israeli Army Intelligence. MEMRI feeds the media and politicians with highly selective quotations from extreme Arab publications. Meyrav's husband, Davis Wurmser, is at Perle's American Enterprise Institute, heading Middle East Studies. Mention should also be made of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy of our old acquaintance, Dennis Ross, who for years was in charge of the "peace process" in the Middle East.
In all the important papers there are people close to the group, such as William Safire, a man hypnotized by Sharon, in the New York Times and Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Another Perle friend, Robert Bartley, is the editor of the Wall Street Journal.
If the speeches of Bush and Cheney often sound as if they came from the lips of Sharon, one of the reasons may be that their speechwriters, Joseph Shattan, Mathew Scully and John McConnell, are neo-cons, as is Cheneys Chief-of-Staff, Lewis Libby.
The immense influence of this largely Jewish group stems from its close alliance with the extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who nowadays control Bush's Republican party. The founding fathers were Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, who once got a jet plane as a present from Menachem Begin, and Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network, which help to finance the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem of J.W. van der Hoeven, an outfit that supports the settlers and their right-wing allies.
Common to both groups is their adherence to the fanatical ideology of the extreme right in Israel. They see the Iraq war as a struggle between the Children of Light (America and Israel) and the Children of Darkness (the Arabs and Muslims).
By the way, none of these facts are secret. They have been published lately in dozens of articles, both in American and world media. The members of the group are proud of them.
The Zionist general.
The man who symbolizes this victory is General Jay Garner, who has just been appointed chief of the civilian administration in Iraq.
He is no anonymous general who has been picked accidentally. Garner is the ideological partner of Paul Wolfowitz and the neo-cons.
Two years ago he signed, together with 26 other officers, a petition organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, lauding the Israeli Army for "remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority," which is certainly news to the Israeli peace forces. He also stated that "a strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely on."
In the first Gulf War he praised the performance of the Patriot missiles, which had failed miserably. After leaving the army in 1997, he became, not surprisingly, a defense contractor specializing in missiles. It was alleged that he landed non-competitive Pentagon contracts. This year he obtained a defense contract for $ 1.5 billion, as well as a contract for building Patriot systems in Israel.
Therefore, there can be no better candidate for the job of chief of the civilian administration in Iraq, especially at a time when contracts for billions of dollars for reconstruction have to be handed out, to be paid for by Iraqi oil.
A new Balfour declaration.
The ideology of this group, that calls for an American world-empire as well as for a Greater Israel, reminds one of bygone days.
The Balfour declaration of 1917, that promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine, had two parents. The mother was Christian Zionism (among whose adherents were illustrious statesmen like Lord Palmerston and Lord Shaftesbury, long before the foundation of the Zionist movement), the father was British imperialism. The Zionist idea allowed the British to crowd out their French competitors and take possession of Palestine, which was needed to safeguard the Suez Canal and the shorter sea route to India.
Now the same thing is happening again. Last year Richard Perle organized a briefing in which a speaker proposed war not only on Iraq, but on Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well, in order to secure the world's oil heartland. Iraq, he asserted, was only the pivot. One of the justifications for this design is the need to defend Israel.
To bet on our life?
Seemingly, all this is good for Israel. America controls the world, we control America. Never before have Jews exerted such an immense influence on the center of world power.
But this tendency troubles me. We are like a gambler, who bets all his money and his future on one horse. A good horse, a horse with no current competitor, but still one horse.
The neo-cons will cause a long period of chaos in the Arab and Muslim world. The Iraqi war has already shown that their understanding of Arab realities is shaky. Their political assumptions did not stand the test, only brute force saved their undertaking.
Some day the Americans will go home, but we shall remain here. We have to live with the Arab peoples. Chaos in the Arab world endangers our future.
Wolfowitz and Co. may dream about a democratic, liberal, Zionist and America-loving Middle East, but the result of their adventures may well turn out to be a fanatical and fundamentalist region that will threaten our very existence.
The partnership of the neo-cons and the Christian fundamentalists may engender counter-forces in Washington. And if Bush is defeated in the next election, like his father after his victory in the first Gulf War, this whole gang will be thrown out.
The Bible tells us about the kings of Judea, who relied on the then world power, Egypt. They did not appreciate the rise of forces in the east, Assyria and Babylon. An Assyrian general told the king of Judea: "Behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, upon Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it." (II kings 18, 21).
Bush and his gang of neo-cons is not a bruised reed. Far from it, he is now a very strong reed. But should we bet our whole future on this?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist. His essays are included in The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.
Today's Features | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005 3:45 pm Post subject: Bush is the real threat |
| Bush is the real threat
Tony Benn
Wednesday August 31, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1559492,00.html
Now that the US president has announced that he has not ruled out an
attack on
Iran, if it does not abandon its nuclear programme, the Middle East
faces a
crisis that could dwarf even the dangers arising from the war in Iraq.
Even a conventional weapon fired at a nuclear research centre - whether
or not a
bomb was being made there - would almost certainly release
radioactivity into
the atmosphere, with consequences seen worldwide as a mini-Hiroshima.
We would be told that it had been done to uphold the principles of the
nuclear
non-proliferation treaty (NPT) - an argument that does not stand up to
a
moment's examination.
The moral and legal basis of the NPT convention, which the
International Atomic
Energy Agency is there to uphold, was based on the agreement of
non-nuclear
nations not to acquire nuclear weapons if nuclear powers undertook not
to extend
nuclear arsenals and negotiate to secure their abolition. Since then,
the
Americans have launched a programme that would allow them to use
nuclear weapons
in space, nuclear bunker-busting bombs are being developed, and
depleted uranium
has been used in Iraq - all of which are clear breaches of the NPT.
Israel,
which has a massive nuclear weapons programme, is accepted as a close
ally of
the US, which still arms and funds it.
Even those who are opposed, as I am, to nuclear weapons in every
country
including Iran, North Korea, Britain and the US, accept that nuclear
power for
electricity generation need not necessarily lead to the acquisition of
the bomb.
Indeed, many years ago, when the shah - who had been put on the throne
by the US
- was in power in Iran, enormous pressure was put on me, as secretary
of state
for energy, to agree to sell nuclear power stations to him. That
pressure came
from the Atomic Energy Authority, in conjunction with Westinghouse, who
were
anxious to promote their own design of reactor.
It is easy to understand why president Bush might see the bombing of
Iran as a
way to regain some of the political credibility he has lost as a result
of the
growing hostility in America to the Iraq war due to the heavy
casualties
suffered by US forces there .
It is inconceivable that the White House can be contemplating an
invasion of
Iran, and what must be intended is a US airstrike, or airstrikes, on
Iranian
nuclear installations, comparable to Israel's bombing of Iraq in 1981.
Israel
has publicly hinted that it might do the same again to prevent Iran
developing
nuclear nuclear weapons. Such an attack, whether by the US or Israel,
would be
in breach of the UN Charter, as was the invasion of Iraq. But neither
Bush,
Sharon nor Blair would take any notice of that.
Some influential Americans appear to be convinced that the US will
attack Iran.
Whether they are right or not, the build-up to a new war is taking
exactly the
same form as it did in 2002. First we are being told that Iran poses a
military
threat, because it may be developing nuclear weapons. We are assured
that the
President is hoping that diplomacy might succeed through the European
negotiations which have been in progress for some months.
This is just what we were told when Hans Blix was in Baghdad talking to
Saddam
on behalf of the UN, but we now know, from a Downing Street memorandum
leaked
some months ago, that the decision to invade had been taken long before
that.
That may be the position now, and I fear that if a US attack does take
place,
the prime minister will give it his full support. And one of his
reasons for
doing so will be the same as in Iraq: namely the fear that, if he
alienates
Bush, Britain's so-called independent deterrent might be taken away.
For, as I
also learned when I was energy secretary, Britain is entirely dependent
on the
US for the supply of our Trident warheads and associated technology.
They cannot
even be targeted unless the US switches on its global satellite system.
Therefore Britain could be assisting America to commit an act of
aggression
under the UN Charter, which could risk a major nuclear disaster, and
doing so
supposedly to prevent nuclear proliferation, with the real motive of
making it
possible for us to continue to break the NPT in alliance with America.
The irony is that we might be told that Britain must support Bush, yet
again,
because of the threat of weapons of mass destruction, thus allowing him
to kill
even more innocent civilians.
· Tony Benn will be talking about War; Religion and politics; and
Democracy, at
the Shaw Theatre in London on September 7, 8 and 9 | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
