| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject: We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East |
| July 17, 2006
We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East
by Paul Craig Roberts
The old adage, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" does not apply to Americans, who have shown that they can be endlessly fooled.
Neoconservatives deceived Americans into an illegal attack and debilitating war in Iraq. American neoconservatives are closely allied with Israel's Likud Party. In the past, some neocons lost their security clearances because of "mishandling" of classified information. According to Insight magazine, "the Pentagon has banned security clearance to Americans with relatives in Israel. Government sources and attorneys said the Pentagon has sought and succeeded in removing security clearance from dozens of Americans, mostly Jews, who either lived, worked, or have relatives in Israel."
Despite questions of dual loyalties, neocons hold high positions in the Bush regime. Ten years ago these architects of American foreign and military policy spelled out how they would use deception to achieve "important Israeli strategic objectives" in the Middle East. First, they would focus "on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." This would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks from Hezbollah. The attacks would let Israel gain American sympathy and permit Israel to seize the strategic initiative by "engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."
Today, this neoconservative plan is unfolding before our eyes. Israel has used the capture of two of its soldiers in Lebanon as an excuse for an all-out air and naval bombardment against Lebanese civilian targets. However, a number of commentators have pointed out that such a massive attack requires weeks if not months of preparation that could not be done overnight in response to the capture of the soldiers.
Regardless, in the first two days of the Israeli military attack on Lebanon more than a hundred civilians, including Canadians, have been killed by Israeli bombs (gifts from U.S. taxpayers). The Beirut International Airport has been repeatedly bombed, as have residential neighborhoods, roads, bridges, ports, and power stations.
Soldiers are a legitimate military target. Civilians, civilian neighborhoods, tourists, and international airports are not. Under the Nuremberg standard used to sentence Nazi war criminals to death, the Israeli government is clearly guilty of war crimes.
Meanwhile, the Israelis are committing identical war crimes in Gaza. Again Israel's excuse is the capture of an Israeli soldier. However, the distinguished Israeli professor Ran HaCohen said that the Israeli army "had been demanding a massive attack on Gaza long before the Israeli soldier was kidnapped."
By blocking UN Security Council action against Israel for its massacre of civilians in Gaza, the Bush regime has made itself complicit in these monstrous war crimes. Just as Germans who supported Hitler were deemed to be complicit in his war crimes, Americans who support Bush are complicit in Bush's war crimes.
Hezbollah is not the Lebanese government. It does not rule Lebanon. Hezbollah is the militia organization founded in 1982 in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah defeated the Israeli army and drove out the Israeli invaders six years ago.
According to the BBC, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the two Israeli soldiers "were captured to pressure Israel to release the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails," especially the women and children.
The BBC also notes that although Hezbollah operates "from Lebanese territory and the militant group has two ministers in the Lebanese government, the central government is almost powerless to influence the militant group." (Note that the BBC applies the loaded word "militant" to Hezbollah but not to Israel.) Hezbollah, reports the BBC, "is also very popular in Lebanon and highly respected for its political activities, social services, and its military record against Israel."
The prime minister of Lebanon, who was installed with President Bush's approval when Syria, under Bush's pressure, recently withdrew its troops from Lebanon, has twice appealed to Bush to pressure Israel to stop its criminal attacks. Our great moral, democratic, Christian leader has twice rebuffed the appeal from the legal representative of the Lebanese people. Instead, Bush is willingly going along with the 1996 neocon script. Bush is laying the blame on Syria and Iran, exactly as the neocon script calls for him to do.
When Bush demands that Syria "stop Hezbollah attacks," he forgets that he was the one who forced Syria out of Lebanon (to enable Israel to attack Lebanon). If Americans were attentive, they would be ashamed to witness "their" president acting as an Israeli propagandist.
Fox "News," CNN, and the rest of the Bush propaganda ministry are echoing the lie that innocent Israel is under attack from the "terrorist states" of Syria and Iran through their surrogate, Hezbollah. Americans, who are sick of the Iraq occupation and want the troops home, are being fooled again and set up for wider war in the Middle East.
Evangelical "Christians" are part of the propaganda show. Three thousand of them, under the lead of the Rev. John C. Hagee, are heading to Washington for a "Washington/Israel summit" to demand, needlessly, that the neocon Bush regime show "stronger support for Israel."
It is difficult to see how Bush could show any stronger support without using the U.S. military to assist Israel in its attacks, which is, of course, what the "Christian" Rev. Hagee intends when he declares: "There's a new Hitler in the Middle East [he doesn't mean Bush or Olmert]. The only way he will be stopped will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran."
Present at Rev. Hagee's "Washington/Israel Summit" will be Israel's former Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and Gary Bauer.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful lobby in Washington, expressed its thanks to Rev. Hagee for demonstrating "the depth and breadth of American support" for Israel. Recently, AIPAC has been under investigation as a suspected nest for Israeli spies.
David Brog, former chief of staff for Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, has gone to work for Rev. Hagee. Brog, who is Jewish, says he works for Hagee's evangelical enterprise because "we're bringing into a pro-Israel camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice. Israel's enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands that." Brog goes on to say that Hagee's evangelicals understand that they are not supposed to talk about Jesus, only about saving Israel: "Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking about Jesus. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to do."
Gentle reader, is this an admission that evangelicals have set aside Jesus for war? Do these bloody-minded evangelicals really believe they will be wafted to Heaven for helping Israel involve the U.S. in more war? Have evangelicals forgotten that "an eye for an eye" is Old Testament? "Turn the other cheek" is New Testament.
On July 14, Reuters reported that alone among Christians, the "Vatican condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon."
Whose delusion is the greatest – the evangelical "rapture" delusion, the neocon delusion about American power, or the Zionist delusion? The three together mean disaster for America, Israel, and the world.
One of the great evangelical/Zionist/neocon myths is that "tiny Israel" armed with 200 nuclear weapons is threatened by Muslim Middle Eastern countries. In actual fact, Egypt and Pakistan, which have the bulk of the Middle Eastern Muslim population, are ruled by American puppets. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates are totally dependent on U.S. protection and, thereby, are also under the American thumb. Iran is Persian, not Arab, and has no common borders with Israel. Hezbollah was created when Israel tried to seize Lebanon in 1982. Hamas is a Palestinian response to the atrocities Palestinians have suffered for a half century at Israel's hands.
Israel's land-stealing policy is the source of Middle Eastern instability. America is hated because American money and weapons are what enable Israel to steal Palestine from Palestinians.
As numerous Middle East experts have pointed out, what is decried as "Arab terrorism against Israel" is, in fact, the only tactic Muslims have for calling the world's attention to the plight of the Palestinians, about which Americans are generally ignorant.
It is absurd for Bush to condemn Syria for not behaving as an American puppet and for not fighting Israel's battles by taking on Hezbollah. Syria and Iran (and Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion) are the only Middle Eastern countries independent of American control. It is far beyond the boundaries of reason and morality to expect these two remaining independent countries to give up their independence in order to enable Israel to steal Palestine and southern Lebanon.
It is the refusal of Syria and Iran (and Saddam Hussein's Iraq) to stand with Israel against Palestine that has made them targets for American attack. Neocons have total control of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush regime, and they have morphed our strategic interests into Israel's.
As the neoconservative architects of Bush's wars revealed in 1996, their concern lies with Israeli strategic objectives.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts
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July 20, 2006
A Handful of Neocons Are Instigating a Wider War
Will Americans join Iraqis, Lebanese, and Palestinians as neocon victims?
by Paul Craig Roberts
What explains the indifference of the Bush administration to the slaughter of civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza?
As of the morning of July 19, Israeli bombardments of Lebanese civilian residential districts and public infrastructure have murdered 300 Lebanese, wounded 1,000, and displaced 500,000. The Lebanese prime minister said that Israel's attack has caused "unimaginable losses" and that his government will seek compensation from Israel.
In Gaza, Israel has murdered scores of Palestinian civilians in the past few days.
In Iraq, the civilian daily death toll has risen above 100.
These dead are not Hezbollah militia. They are not Hamas militia. They are not al-Qaeda or Sunni insurgents. They are civilians.
Frustrated by Hezbollah, Israel is lashing out at hapless civilians, knowing that the U.S. will protect Israel from UN Security Council condemnation.
Frustrated by Sunni insurgents, the U.S. has instigated sectarian strife.
Bush has stonewalled the UN, our European allies, and the Lebanese prime minister, all of whom are calling and pleading for Bush to pressure the Israelis to stop their cowardly slaughter from the air of Lebanese civilians.
The Guardianreports that Bush gave Israel the green light to attack Lebanon and has given Olmert another week to pound Lebanon.
U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice has announced that she will go to the Middle East to resolve "the crisis" when it is appropriate. Apparently, the appropriate time is not when people are dying and a country, which had only just recovered from the last Israeli invasion, is again being bombed into rubble.
How many more war crimes must Israel commit before Bush and Condi Rice put aside their indifference?
On July 19, the Israelis turned their air attack on the Christian area of Beirut. The Lebanese Christians can thank the American evangelical Rev. John Hagee, who has thrown his 18,000 member Texas church behind Israeli aggression.
Bush cannot claim public support for his indifference.
As of noon July 19, 800,000 people had participated in CNN's Quick Vote, with the result that 55 percent oppose Israel's attack on Lebanon. This result is despite the fact that U.S. television reporting explains the news from the Israeli perspective.
Similarly, in Israel a survey published by Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth showed 53 percent of Israelis polled said Israel should hold negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli soldier captured in Gaza, while 43 percent backed a military operation.
A poll taken by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports that 28 percent of Israelis believe Israel should immediately stop bombing Lebanon, compared to 7 percent who believe that the bombing should continue until the captured soldiers are freed, and 14 percent who believe bombing should continue until Lebanon agrees to disarm Hezbollah – a task that Israel's invasion has made more impossible than ever.
If these polls are reliable, one can conclude that the U.S. and Israeli populations are more moral, and more concerned with human life, than are the leaders of the two countries.
Neither can Bush claim that he is supporting Israel because he is Israel's friend. If Bush were Israel's friend, he would not have given a green light to Israel's aggression, which will create more hatred of Israel.
As a number of Israeli writers have pointed out, Israel has shown tooth and claw to its Arab neighbors for decades to no avail.
Writing in Ha'aretz, Yitzhak Laor notes that Israel's problems are not the result of insufficient bombing and destruction of Arab populations. Yet, once again Israeli militants are "enlarging the circle of hostilities, including harming civilians. What Israel's 'strategists' have to offer is the destruction of yet another country."
Laor says the Americans can do this in Iraq with less consequence for themselves, because "the Americans do not intend to live in this region." Israelis cannot afford to show only tooth and claw to their neighbors, because "we do live here."
It sometimes seems Bush goes beyond indifference to contentment with the slaughter of Muslim civilians. Bush has even come across as gleeful as if he is on a dove hunt in a baited Texas field where joy resides in the killing of countless birds.
Many Muslims believe that Bush and Israel see them as animals to be slain. On July 17, neocon John Bolton, Bush's unconfirmed ambassador to the UN, gave credence to this Muslim belief when he announced that Israelis killed by terrorists were more important than the Lebanese civilians killed by Israel. Bolton said that there is no "moral equivalence" between Lebanese civilians killed by Israel and Israeli civilians killed by Muslim terrorists: "It's simply not the same thing to say that it's the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense."
In Bolton's sick mind, Lebanese civilians are not experiencing terrorism when Israel deliberately targets them and drops high explosives on their apartment buildings, streets, bridges, and power plants, and bombs the Beirut International Airport. This, says Bolton, is Israel acting in self-defense.
If Israel grabs Palestinian or Lebanese land and murders civilians, that is "self-defense," but if someone responds to Israeli aggression with a rocket, that is "Muslim terrorism."
The world is sick of this double-standard. Unfortunately, not enough Americans and Israelis are.
Consequently, conflict will continue and escalate. Laor writes that "the director of the American Jewish Committee's Israel/Middle East Office, Eran Lerman, is already recommending going to war against Syria."
And so are the American neoconservatives who control the Bush administration, Washington think tanks, and media positions once held by true American conservatives.
Isolated in their evil, the neoconservatives are frantically and shrilly demanding that Bush join Israel in military attacks on Syria and Iran in order to "build democracy" and to clear the Middle East of any opposition to Israel's unbridled self-interest. The crazed David Horowitz writes that "Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world."
Neoconservatives believe that the U.S. and Israel can extirpate Islam with fire and sword and that the present opportunity to escalate the current conflict into generalized war in the Middle East must not be missed.
Neocon warmongers have stolen the conservative name, the Republican Party, and a portion of the evangelical movement.
Are Americans too inattentive and too brainwashed to prevent their moronic president and his neocon government from initiating a dangerous war?
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts
PNAC Neocon Kristol calls for attack on Iran (for Israel, of course!):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/21/pnac-neocon-kristol-calls-for-attack-on-iran-for-israel.php
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Scroll down to the 'Thinking about Neoconservatism' article link at the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/04/06/neoconservatism-as-a-jewish-movement.php
Energized Neocons Say Israel's Fight Is Washington's:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/19/energized-neocons-say-israel-s-fight-is-washington-s.php
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
Last edited by Alpha on Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:46 am; edited 4 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:37 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9314
July 17, 2006
Will We Go to War for Israel?
Israel says "Jump!"
Americans ask: "How high?"
by Justin Raimondo
Listening to Newt Gingrich bloviate on Meet the Press, advocating U.S. intervention on Israel's behalf against Syria and Iran – and the pathetic Joe "Me Too" Biden effectively agreeing with him – one can only wonder how or why anybody listens to these crazies. As Newt, the megalomaniacal has-been, gleefully declares that "World War III" is in progress, and weaves a conspiracy theory linking Iran, Syria, North Korea, Hezbollah, and – believe it or not! – Venezuela, old Joe just sits there nodding out. Given a chance to reply, his only objection to Gingrich's vision of war on all fronts is that, yes, we need to go to war, but we have to do it with the support of our allies. "Fighting Joe" Biden is no weenie: his voice hardens as he avers we should tell the North Koreans that we have the capacity to "annihilate" them. Gingrich smiles.
He has good reason to smile. Aside from his fondness for the concept of annihilation, he knows that the War Party's "liberal" Democratic wing is falling into line. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon – which many predict will include the de facto annexation of a southern "buffer zone" – has the fulsome support of both parties. When the Israelis tell the Americans to jump, the only question Biden and the Democratic party leadership have is: How high?
What Israel wants is what they have always wanted: to use American power, American tax dollars, and American lives to advance their own expansionist agenda. Twenty-five thousand Americans are in Lebanon at the present moment, all of them at risk from Israeli bombs – but that didn't factor into Tel Aviv's calculations, any more than Lebanese or Palestinian lives matter one whit to them. The Israelis put Israel first – and so does Washington. If all 25,000 American tourists and others have to perish in the flames of Israeli air strikes, then so be it. No sacrifice is too great – just as long as our Israel-centric foreign policy remains firmly in place.
Unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the presence of a substantial American force in the midst of Mesopotamia, the Israelis are the tip of an American spear aimed at Syria and Iran. And Israel's amen corner in Washington and the media are doggedly pushing the talking point that these two spokes on the "axis of evil" are churning the Lebanese waters. MSNBC assures us that Iran "created" Hezbollah: knowledgeable analysts can only laugh at this agitprop – but then they aren't cited in this piece. Only a former Israeli general is.
Hezbollah, of course, was "created," not by Iran, but by the Israeli invasion of 1982. The group gained prestige and adherents as it drove the invading Israelis back over the border and set up an elaborate network of social service organizations, standing candidates for office and entering the Lebanese Parliament. The mere sight of an Arab entity successfully defying Israel, and not only living to tell the tale but also prospering, is impermissible: Russian President Vladimir Putin was not alone in saying that there was more to the Israeli agenda than merely getting back their captured – um, I mean "kidnapped" – soldiers.
Another war, a silent war, is going on in the corridors of power, and the fighting in the Middle East, in an important sense, is merely a reflection of a long, bitter internecine struggle in Washington. Those Republican "realists" we hear so much about – holdovers from the Bush I regime, "realist" policy wonks, and those Republicans who look at the polls – have their champion (or best hope, at any rate) in Condoleezza Rice. Her personal relationship with the president and her elevation to head of the State Department have led several commentators to equate this as a victory for the "realists."
The neoconservative ideologues, who have been the radical vanguard of the War Party all along, certainly believe this, which is why Richard Perle recently took her on in the Washington Post. The Condi faction temporarily gained the upper hand when they came out with a policy on Iran that had been worked on in secret and took the road of negotiation rather than outright military confrontation and "regime change."
The Israeli answer: invade Lebanon, force the issue, and go for the throat. With the Israel lobby going full-bore and the propaganda mills churning, the invasion undermines the Rice faction and puts the issue of regime-change back on the administration's agenda. While that change of regime will, initially, be limited to southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah operates a de facto independent state, it will eventually – the neocons hope – extend to the whole of the country, topple Bashar al-Assad in Syria – and, eventually, spill over into Iran.
Dan Rather said on Chris Matthews' Sunday show that the road is littered with the corpses of those who underestimated Dick Cheney, and the reassertion of the neoconservative voice within this administration – a voice that many thought had been nearly stilled by the grotesque failure of our Iraqi disaster – is a testament to the validity of his thesis.
The neocons' comeback is made possible by the Democrats' complete prostration before the Israeli offensive. Biden's babbling that our lack of allies has crippled our ability to mediate the Middle East conflict is completely wrong – and beside the point, in any case. To begin with, all the Arab killer regimes – the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the dictators, the kings, the petty tyrants and emirs – are taking the line that Hezbollah, and not Israel, is to blame. The Lebanese, they say, have brought this on themselves and now have to bear the consequences of Hassan Nasrallah's actions.
Yet a state of war still exists between Israel and Lebanon – no peace treaty was ever signed. And the border is closely watched by both parties: it's hard to imagine the Israelis failed to realize that sending in a few unguarded troops so close to Hezbollah positions would likely result in their capture. Hezbollah took the bait, and the trap snapped shut.
The question boils down to this: can the Israelis win a war with Hezbollah without American intervention? The answer, clearly, is no: look what happened last time. The Americans, lured into Beirut, suffered 241 casualties – after bombing Beirut's suburbs – and Reagan wisely withdrew. Israel, in the end, was driven out. The neocons are determined that, this time, the Americans will not only stay – they'll go for Damascus.
The call for American military intervention is bound to come up, rather shortly, and get louder as the long "precision" bombing of the Lebanese continues. The Israelis will pound Lebanon in a display of U.S.-backed military power, and the only debate in Washington will be over to what extent we ought to intervene, rather than whether we ought to get involved at all.
In the end, some combination of UN-NATO-American military intervention will do for the Israelis what they could never accomplish on their own: neutralize all opposition to their conquest of Palestine coming from the Levant. The "debate" in Washington is only over how to achieve that goal: the Democrats say we have to do it "multilaterally," and the Republicans, with Jacksonian disdain, say we don't have to answer to anybody (except the Israelis, of course).
There is no "solution" to the Middle East's many conflicts, and American attempts to formulate one are doomed to failure. Some problems are just not solvable by human efforts, and this is one of them. Our intervention only serves to exacerbate the situation and spread the conflict – with blowback that can and did have deadly consequences as far as our own interests are concerned.
American interests play little or no role in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and we all know why. What scholars John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt said in their now famous study [.pdf] of "the Lobby," as they call it, is being confirmed in spades by this latest episode:
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. 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 U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?"
Their answer: "The unmatched power of the Israel Lobby."
That Lobby is now furiously demanding – and getting – unconditional support for the violation of Lebanon's sovereignty not only from the president, but from the leaders of both political parties and the major mandarins of the commentariat. The Mearsheimer-Walt thesis has now been confirmed. The question is: what do we do about it?
America's real interests in the Middle East are in securing two primary goals: (1) Making sure that war and political factors don't obstruct the free flow of commerce – and oil – to American markets, and (2) neutralizing the Osama bin Ladens of the Middle East ideologically, not necessarily in that order. Regarding the first goal, I merely refer you to current oil prices. On the second matter, our unconditional support for Israel's brazen invasion is now the chief recruiting tool for bin Laden and his gang.
While the War Party runs roughshod over authentic American interests, the U.S. political landscape, at this point, lacks anything remotely resembling a Peace Party. Don't look to the Democrats, as a party, to come to our rescue. They won't. "The Lobby" works both sides of the partisan fence, and, as we all know, "politics ends at the water's edge" – which is how we've been dragged into every war of modern times, despite popular opposition.
Perhaps, some day, an administration and a Congress that puts America first will regain control of Washington. That prospect, however, appears dim at the moment. As Americans wake up to World War IV on the horizon, however, it is not completely out of the question. War teases out new trends and creates new patterns in the politics of a nation, and it does so rather rapidly. In any case, we have to hope – because the alternative is so unappealing.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I apologize for sounding a note of weariness, and even despair, in the above paragraph. It is provoked, I fear, by the sheer repetition involved in writing a column such as this. In pointing out the dangers inherent in our foreign policy, and underscoring the probable consequences of our reckless arrogance, I sometimes think I am writing the same column, over and over again, and that the real trick is in introducing some variation of language. So, rather than simply saying "I told you so!", I have compiled a few quotes from previous columns on the subject of Israel, Lebanon, and the prospect of a gathering regional war.
Note: I have left the original links in, in spite of the maddening practice of many news organizations in deleting or moving their online content.
May 7, 2003
"Will this same gang of warmongers entrap us in a war with Syria, and drag us back into Lebanon, where we are sure to confront the ghosts of our past errors? The battle-cry has already been sounded: Stay tuned as we hear news of Syria's 'weapons of mass destruction" and the inevitable question: 'Is Saddam in Syria?'
"As Yogi Berra once said: 'This is like deja-vu all over again!'"
Feb. 16, 2005
"Wars don't respect national borders, and it's only a matter of time before the Americans' ongoing battle against the Iraqi insurgency spills over into Syria. As I predicted in September 2003, 'We are a border incident away from taking the war into Syria, and beyond,' and that analysis seems borne out by events.
"All the elements of a regional conflagration are now in place, and the assassination of Hariri has set the fuse to burning. How long before the troops move out is anyone's guess, but make no mistake about it: Syria is next on the War Party's agenda.
"As I have said from the very beginning, the war in Iraq was and is just a means to the ends of finally securing Israel's 'security' – by making it the dominant power in the region. This is now being confirmed as the U.S. takes aim at Syria and moves against Hizbollah."
Dec. 12, 2005
"Syria is now girding for the imposition of economic sanctions and trying to head off the campaign to destabilize the country on two fronts: by restarting talks with Israel, and by cooperating with the request to permit Syrian officials to be questioned in the Hariri investigation. I have the funny feeling, however, that this is not going to do them a lot of good, as far as their enemies in the West are concerned. As we have seen in the case of Iraq, when the U.S. wants to manufacture a case for war, it can be done pretty easily: Congress is not likely to ask inconvenient questions until it's too late, and the American people can hardly be expected to keep up with arcane doings in faraway Lebanon, the scene of the intrigue and obscure religious-ethnic rivalries that could spark another Mideast war. Acting pretty much without either congressional or public scrutiny, this administration thinks it can get away with anything when it comes to Syria – and in that, they are probably right."
March 2, 2005
"Two years after the invasion and conquest of Iraq, and what have we gained? An Islamic state in Iraq, a looming confrontation with Syria, and the increasingly likely prospect of Lebanon reverting to a state of civil war."
Feb. 23, 2005
"We are in for a long buildup to direct intervention in Lebanon, and Syria. … It's all so predictable, and boring, that I can't even write about it for another minute, except to say: They've only just begun…"
Jan. 2, 2006 – New Year's column
"The escalation of the war against the Iraqi insurgencies – yes, I mean that to be a plural – into a regional conflict is a possibility that will increasingly present itself in 2006. The New Year had barely dawned when reports of U.S. planning for a military strike on Iran were coming from UPI and the Jerusalem Post. It is Syria, however, that represents a real opportunity for the War Party to effect some 'regime change' in the region: the process of setting up Bashar al-Assad as the latest edition of Ba'athist Evil in the Middle East is already well underway. Contrary to most of the evidence, including the most basic considerations of common sense, Syria has been tagged as the murderer of Lebanese entrepreneur-politician Rafik Hariri, who was killed in a Beirut car blast last year, and the UN 'investigation' is taking on all the appearances of a propaganda campaign directed at Damascus.
"Hillary has already signed on to the campaign to provoke a conflict with Syria, and she won't hear any argument from McCain on this matter. When the alleged Democratic 'dove' Nancy Pelosi touts her support of sanctions against Syria – in spite of the very valuable cooperation proffered by Damascus in tracking down Islamist terrorist cells – the chances of avoiding a military conflict with Damascus appear dim."
Oct. 24, 2005
"The U.S. is ratcheting up its campaign against Syria, even as the principal proponents of confronting Damascus – Libby, Hadley, Hannah, Wurmser, et al. – find themselves in Fitzgerald's sights. In effect, the prosecutor is running a race with the War Party: can they provoke a war with Syria before he brings charges? For the sake of the country, I dearly hope Fitzgerald's staff has writer's cramp by now from furiously tapping out indictments."
March 29, 2006
"The battle will not be joined all at once, however: don't expect a full-scale frontal assault on Iran any time soon. The struggle will break out between Iranian proxies – the Shi'ite party militias, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iranian-backed factions based in Syria – and the U.S. and its allies in the region, including not only the Israelis but also the Kurds and the Christian Lebanese factions."
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:38 pm Post subject: In search of the truth about the Israel lobby's influence on |
| A Beautiful Friendship?
In search of the truth about the Israel lobby's influence on Washington
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201627_pf.html
By Glenn Frankel
Sunday, July 16, 2006; W13
All David Ben-Gurion wanted was 15 minutes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's time.
Israel's founding father, one of the indomitable political leaders of the 20th century, came to Washington in December 1941 yearning to present the case for a Jewish state directly to the American president. He took a two-room suite at the old Ambassador Hotel at 14th and K for $1,000 a month and cooled his heels for 10 weeks, writing letters and reports and making passes at Miriam Cohen, his attractive American secretary. But Ben-Gurion didn't get the meeting. Not then, not ever. Not even a pair of presidential cuff links.
Now let's fast-forward 64 years to late May and a news conference in the East Room of the White House. That tall, freckled, slightly nervous-looking man with the rust-colored hair standing alongside President Bush at matching lecterns is Ehud Olmert, 12th prime minister of Israel. The two leaders and their advisers have just spent two hours together in the Oval Office. Bush is reaffirming the "deep and abiding ties between Israel and the United States" and praising Olmert's "bold ideas" and commitment to peace. Afterward, they'll adjourn for a private session without aides or note-takers and then go to dinner together. And the next day Olmert will address a joint session of Congress, whose members will interrupt his speech with 16 standing ovations. Ben-Gurion, whose remains rest in a simple grave overlooking the Negev Desert, would be stunned.
It's not that Olmert is a more commanding figure than Ben-Gurion. Far from it. No, it's about power. And not just Israeli power. It's really about the perceived power of the Israel lobby, a collection of American Jewish organizations, campaign contributors and think tanks -- aided by Christian conservatives and other non-Jewish supporters -- that arose over the second half of the 20th century and that sees as a principle goal the support and promotion of the interests of the state of Israel.
Thanks to the work of the lobby and its allies, Israel gets more direct foreign aid -- about $3 billion a year -- than any other nation. There's a file cabinet somewhere in the State Department full of memoranda of understanding on military, diplomatic and economic affairs. Israel gets treated like a NATO member when it comes to military matters and like Canada or Mexico when it comes to free trade. There's an annual calendar full of meetings of joint strategic task forces and other collaborative sessions. And there's a presidential pledge, re-avowed by Bush in the East Room, that the United States will come to Israel's aid in the event of attack.
On Capitol Hill the Israel lobby commands large majorities in both the House and Senate. Polls show strong public support for Israel -- a connection that has grown even deeper after the September 11 attacks. The popular equation goes like this: Israelis equal good guys, Arabs equal terrorists. Working the Hill these days, says Josh Block, spokesman for the premier Israeli lobbying group known as AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "is like pushing at an open door."
Not everyone believes this is a good thing. In March two distinguished political scientists -- Stephen Walt from Harvard and John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago -- published a 42-page, heavily footnoted essay arguing that the Bush administration's support for Israel and its related effort to spread democracy throughout the Middle East have "inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security."
The professors claim that our intimate partnership with Israel is both dangerous and unprecedented. "Other special interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest," they argue. They go on to say that the war in Iraq "was due in large part to the Lobby's influence," and that the same combine is "using all of the strategies in its playbook" to pressure the administration into being aggressive and belligerent with Iran. The bottom line: "Israel's enemies get weakened or overthrown, Israel gets a free hand with the Palestinians, and the United States does most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying."
A sweet deal for Israel, in other words, but a very bad one for America.
Some of the lobby's critics hailed the essay as a much-needed breath of fresh air and praised Walt and Mearsheimer for their courage and -- dare we say it -- chutzpah. Their paper, wrote antiwar activist and media critic Norman Solomon in the Baltimore Sun, "is prying the lid off a debate that has been bottled up for decades."
But the two professors knew they were treading on delicate ground. For generations, the idea of a cabal of powerful Jews hijacking the national interest for its own purposes has fueled anti-Semitism around the world. Supporters of Israel argued that the essay echoed those claims.
Alan Dershowitz, author, lawyer, celebrity and Harvard professor, said the essay is rife with "bigoted comments" and "the smell of singling out Jews and singling out Israel." Abraham Foxman, longtime director of the Anti-Defamation League, told me the paper
essentially, and erroneously, blames the Jews for the war in Iraq. Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the United States, who hadn't commented publicly until our interview, called it "tainted, shallow and sloppy . . . just a compilation of old nonsense and garbage that should be rendered into oblivion, where it belongs."
Walt and Mearsheimer in response insist their facts and arguments remain valid and say the vituperative critical reaction merely affirms one of their key points: that the Israel lobby is a sacred cow and anyone who dares criticize it runs the risk of being branded an anti-Semite. "In effect, the Lobby boasts of its own power and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it," they complain in the essay.
We'll get back to the angry volleyball match between the professors and their critics a bit later. But, flaws and all, the essay has raised some compelling questions. Such as: Just how powerful is the Israel lobby? What was its role in engineering the Iraq war, and is it pushing for a repeat performance in Iran? Is it really all that nefarious? And whose lobby is it anyway?
MORRIS AMITAY IS A DAPPER MAN with a ready smile and a self-deprecatory manner. He works out of a small corner office on North Capitol Street in a building that houses lobbyists from three dozen state governments, assorted defense contractors and the American Gas Association, all of them seeking to spread knowledge and enlightenment among members of Congress and their staffs. Amitay, who operates a small lobbying law firm, blends right in. Yet even among his peers his success is something of a legend.
Educated at Columbia and Harvard Law, Amitay had spent seven years as a diplomat in the State Department and six more as a legislative aide on the Hill when friends approached him in 1974 about becoming executive director of AIPAC. The organization was founded in the early 1950s by a Canadian-born former journalist named I.L. Kenen with funding from various Jewish groups. Kenen was a tireless advocate for Israel in the 1950s and early '60s, when it had to claw for dollars and votes against a powerful and determined lobby of oil interests, Arab-oriented diplomats and lawmakers such as J. William Fulbright, the legendary chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who saw U.S. support of the fledgling Jewish state as a serious mistake that threatened regional stability.
The 1967 Six-Day War marked a turning point. Arab leaders talked confidently of driving the Jews into the sea, igniting fears of a new Holocaust, but Israel launched preemptive airstrikes on Egypt and Syria and won a smashing victory. Many American Jews rallied around their scrappy Middle Eastern cousin, as did non-Jews who saw Israel as a powerful little island of democracy in a sea of hostile Arab dictatorships.
Initially, Amitay was reluctant to take over an organization purporting to represent the forever bickering factions of organized American Jewry. "It was like herding cats," he recalls. "I took the job against my better judgment."
He eventually tripled AIPAC's staff size and budget, but his most strategic decision was to move the office from 13th and G, four blocks from the White House, to the foot of Capitol Hill. Amitay saw the State Department and the rest of the executive branch as hostile territory for Israel and Congress as a natural ally. For one thing, he could do the math: There were only two elected officials in the executive branch -- the president and vice president -- but 535 in Congress. Lots more targets and opportunities for persuasion.
Amitay had a couple of things going for him: his own experience and relationships on the Hill; a small but hard-working staff, which at one time included CNN's Wolf Blitzer; and Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute. But his biggest asset was several thousand affluent grass-roots members for whom Israel was not just a cause but a sacred mission. "The big reason why AIPAC is so effective is the enthusiasm of our people, and that's because of their affinity for Israel, the knowledge they have and the willingness to get involved politically, write a letter, send an e-mail, send a contribution and get to know their members of Congress," Amitay says.
AIPAC is the best-known of a handful of groups that have made support for Israel a centerpiece of their agendas, including the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. But when it comes to Washington, AIPAC wields the real clout.
In its early days, Israel was almost exclusively the foster child of liberal Democrats, the affiliation of most American Jews. That began to change in the late 1970s after Menachem Begin became the country's first right-of-center prime minister. He forged a practical alliance with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other Christian conservatives who saw Jewish rule over the Holy Land as the divinely ordained prelude to the Second Coming of Christ. The Reagan administration saw in Israel a strategic Cold War ally, a balance against Soviet client-states such as Syria and Iraq. Israelis relied on the political support and financial donations that the American Jewish community provided. Still, they were ambivalent and at times contemptuous of their more affluent brethren, who were willing to give money but not willing to move to Israel or send their children there. Ben-Gurion's stated goal had been to bring Jews home from 2,000 years of exile. But the existence of Israel and its pressing needs gave American Jews a rallying cry and sense of cohesion that enhanced their political stature in American society. The late Arthur Hertzberg, a rabbi, historian and president of the American Jewish Congress, once told me that before Israel's existence Jews attended White House dinners as individuals. Afterward, they came as Jews. "In a real sense, being involved with Israel made Jewish leaders more truly American than they had ever dreamt of being," he said.
For some American Jews, the passion for Israel was born partly out of guilt: During World War II, the Jewish establishment, like the U.S. government, had been slow to respond to reports that Jews were being systematically slaughtered in Hitler's Europe. Many Jewish leaders swore they would never let such a crime happen again. They rallied around Israel, which had risen out of the ashes of the Holocaust, to protect it -- and themselves.
And that's the interesting psychological part: While American Jews may have become powerful, they don't feel powerful. A new set of pogroms or a new Holocaust? It could happen, even in America. "There's a certain dynamic to organized Jewish life as to all so-called defense organizations created to protect a supposedly vulnerable group," says Henry Siegman, who once served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress and now directs the U.S./Middle East project at the Council of Foreign Relations. "It creates a culture of victimhood, and it often attracts people who feel like they're victims as well."
AMITAY QUIT AIPAC IN 1980 TO OPEN A LAW PRACTICE that lobbies for defense contractors. But he didn't give up working for Israeli interests, forming his own pro-Israel PAC, the Washington Public Affairs Council. And AIPAC continued to grow under his successor, Thomas Dine, who presided over a massive increase in the group's size and influence during the 1980s, a decade in which the lobby claimed some significant political scalps. Pro-Israel money helped defeat Republican Reps. Paul Findley of Illinois and Pete McCloskey of California and Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois, all of whom were deemed too sympathetic to Arab causes and too critical of Israel.
Findley says he had always voted for aid to Israel even while criticizing Israeli policy. But his real sin was meeting periodically with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom he once praised as "a great champion of human rights." Findley was targeted in the election of 1982: He had served 11 terms; he didn't get a 12th. Two years after that, Percy lost to Paul Simon in a bitter contest in which supporters of Israel poured an estimated $1.8 million into direct contributions and an independent anti-Percy ad campaign. The message to incumbents was clear: Oppose Israel at your peril.
"After that," says Findley, "I really feel the cloak of intimidation was pretty secure."
Percy told colleagues he blamed Amitay personally for his defeat. "Frankly, I didn't know I was that powerful," says Amitay. "We just did what every lobbying group in this town does: It supports its friends and tries to defeat its enemies. So I don't see what the big deal was."
Nevertheless, the Israel lobby, and AIPAC in particular, gained a reputation as the National Rifle Association of foreign policy: a hard-edged, pugnacious bunch that took names and kept score. But in some ways it was even stronger. The NRA's support was largely confined to right-wing Republicans and rural Democrats. But AIPAC made inroads in both parties and both ends of the ideological spectrum.
Then one day it went too far.
THE YEAR WAS 1991, AND PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH WAS ON A ROLL. Having defeated the Iraqi army and driven it out of Kuwait, Bush and his wheeler-dealer secretary of state, James Baker, turned their attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict. They were pushing both sides toward a historic peace conference in Madrid, but first faced an issue that they feared could torpedo the session before it started.
The prime minister of Israel was a hard-liner named Yitzhak Shamir, who in pre-independence days was the gun-wielding leader of the smallest and most extreme of militant Zionist factions. Faced with a wave of Jewish immigrants from the collapsing Soviet Union, Shamir's government was throwing up new housing as fast as possible. To ease the costs of massive borrowing, it was seeking $10 billion in loan guarantees from Washington. Bush and Baker wanted Shamir's pledge that he wouldn't use the loan guarantees toward expanding controversial Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was a promise Shamir didn't want to make. He instructed AIPAC to get the guarantees through Congress over the administration's objections.
The crunch came one day that September when AIPAC dispatched more than 1,000 members to Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress. Bush retaliated at a news conference when he took direct aim at the Israel lobby, saying he was "up against some powerful political forces . . . I heard today there was something like 1,000 lobbyists on the Hill working on the other side of the question. We've got one lonely little guy down here doing it."
AIPAC's leaders had told Shamir they had enough votes to easily override the president in both the House and Senate, but Bush's remarks punctured their balloon like a blowtorch. Within days, leaders of both houses advised AIPAC to back down. Its support had melted away.
But what shocked Shamir even more was the rapid defection of his American Jewish allies. They didn't like being portrayed by the president as a shadowy but powerful force serving the interests of a foreign power. "It clobbered the Jewish community, left us in a state of shock," one American Jewish leader told me later.
Shamir and his aides derided American Jews as timid, even gutless. But Israeli voters blamed him for overplaying his hand. The following year he lost his bid for reelection to the more dovish Yitzhak Rabin. Bush paid a price as well. He got crushed in a small group of heavily Jewish precincts in states such as New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Florida in his November 1992 election loss to Bill Clinton.
When Rabin came to Washington for the first time as prime minister, he summoned AIPAC's leaders to a closed-door meeting at the Madison Hotel in which he accused them of steering Israel into a needless confrontation with the White House. From now on, he told them, Israel would drive its own relations with Washington, and AIPAC would be consigned to a back seat.
The organization's leaders learned an important lesson. "After that they adopted the Colin Powell doctrine," says Ori Nir, a veteran journalist for the Jewish Forward. "They only fought the battles that they knew they could win."
"WELCOME TO THE HEART OF THE EMPIRE," DECLARES JOSH BLOCK, director of media affairs, rolling his eyes as he ushers me into AIPAC's bustling and disheveled headquarters on First Street NW.
There's nothing very imperial about Block, a cheerful thirtysomething veteran of Democratic Party election campaigns whose wife has just given birth to their first child. Nor about his office, whose window overlooks the Washington Monument -- but also a parking lot dominated by a refuse container crammed with discarded sofas outside the D.C. Central Kitchen, a feeding center for the homeless.
The place is a typical Washington-style lobbying and public affairs shop, a warren of small offices and windowless conference rooms spread over two floors, with photocopiers, industrial-type metal bookshelves, sagging gray sofas, institutional brown carpet and drab yellow walls. The air-conditioning system seems less than robust on a steamy June afternoon. AIPAC has plans to move to a slightly grander building up the street next year.
A delegation of Japanese businessmen once took a tour, says Block, and at the end one of them turned to his guide with a polite smile and asked, "Okay, could you now show us where the real headquarters are?"
There's nothing to hide. AIPAC's size, strength and agenda are all public information, much of it displayed on its Web site: the staff of 200 lobbyists, researchers and organizers; the $47 million annual budget; the 100,000 grass-roots members, almost double the number of five years ago; and the recruitment drive on 300 college campuses.
AIPAC in recent years has parted with some of the staff members who gave it a harder edge, foremost among them Steve Rosen, its former director of foreign policy issues. Rosen and a fellow staff member, Keith Weissman, were fired last year after they were indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act for allegedly receiving classified information about administration strategy on Iran from Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon's Iran desk officer. Their trial is scheduled for later this summer.
Lawyers for Rosen and Weissman contend their clients did only what journalists and analysts do every day in Washington -- gather information. Maybe so, but what's really intriguing for our purposes is how this little scandal came about. It wasn't Rosen and Weissman pursuing Franklin; it was Franklin seeking them out to make an end run around his superiors, who didn't share Franklin's view that the White House should crack down harder on Iran's developing nuclear program. Franklin believed enlisting AIPAC's help was the best way to ensure that his message got delivered to the White House.
These days AIPAC's staff is a mix of hired guns and true believers known for their expertise. Take Brad Gordon, co-director of policy and government affairs. Gordon, among other things a former congressional aide and CIA analyst, is a compact man with a clipped mustache, graying hair and a résumé longer than the menu at the Bombay Club, where we meet for lunch. At AIPAC he's in charge of overseeing all legislation. He appears to be careful, modest, self-confident and authoritative about the system and his role. "We have a fairly sophisticated understanding of what's doable and what's not," he tells me. "And we work in the world of the doable."
For overstretched members of Congress and their staffs, who don't have the time or resources to master every subject in their domain, AIPAC makes itself an essential tool. It briefs. It lobbies. It organizes frequent seminars on subjects such as terrorism, Islamic militarism and nuclear proliferation. It brings experts to the Hill from think tanks in Washington and Tel Aviv. It provides research papers and offers advice on drafting legislation on foreign affairs, including the annual foreign aid bill. And behind it is a vast network of grass-roots activists in each House district who make a point of visiting individual members of Congress, inviting them to social events and contributing to their reelection campaigns.
Money is an important part of the equation. AIPAC is not a political action committee, and the organization itself doesn't give a dime in campaign contributions. But its Web site, which details how members of Congress voted on AIPAC's key issues, and the AIPAC Insider, a glossy periodical that handicaps close political races, are scrutinized by thousands of potential donors. Pro-Israel interests have contributed $56.8 million in individual, group and soft money donations to federal candidates and party committees since 1990, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. (By contrast, the center says, pro-Arab and pro-Muslim groups donated $297,000 during the same period.) Between the 2000 and the 2004 elections, the 50 members of AIPAC's board donated an average of $72,000 each to campaigns and political action committees. One in every five board members was a top fundraiser for President Bush or John Kerry.
AIPAC's members often overlap with those of other pro-Israel organizations, some of which are renowned for playing hardball. In 2002, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield, a military campaign that laid siege to cities in the West Bank to counter a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Pro-Israel activists here organized letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts against media organizations for purportedly distorted reporting of Palestinian casualties. One group, the Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America, demonstrated outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities and cost WBUR in Boston more than $1 million in contributions.
AIPAC organizes annual trips to Israel where dozens of members of Congress and their staffs often get their first taste of the Holy Land. Rep. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican who is House majority whip, has taken four AIPAC-sponsored trips to Israel over the years. "The bonding that happens, the understanding of the importance of democracy, the understanding of this miracle in Israel . . . is an incredible thing to watch," he told the organization's annual conference.
The entire AIPAC package has impressed other ethnic groups. Most recently, Indian Americans have sought to forge a network of organizations, think tanks and PACs patterned after the American Jewish model. Lewis Roth of Americans for Peace Now, a left-of-center lobbying group, says, "AIPAC has a trifecta of power on the Hill -- direct lobbying, tremendous grass-roots support and money from contributors who look to them for guidance."
It also helps to have the right enemies.
BRAD GORDON RECALLS WALKING THROUGH THE CORRIDORS OF CAPITOL HILL in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. "More than one member came up to me and said, 'You know, Brad, I always understood intellectually what you were talking about, but now I really get it.'"
Since 9/11, Americans have increasingly come to accept the idea that Israel and the United States share not just values but enemies. A Gallup Poll in February reported 68 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Israel with 23 percent unfavorable, and that Americans support Israelis over Palestinians by 59 percent to 15 percent.
Recent electoral victories by Islamic radicals in Iran and the Palestinian territories have only heightened the sense of us vs. them. With his sweeping condemnations and threats against the United States and Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's radical new president, has quickly joined the pantheon of bad guys, alongside Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "Ahmadinejad is worth every penny," says Morris Amitay. "He says amazing things, and the scary part is he really means it."
This year, AIPAC's two-pronged legislative agenda focuses on these enemies. The first is the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, a bill placing tough new restrictions on aid to the Palestinian Authority since the electoral victory of the militant Islamic group Hamas. Its charter calls for Israel's destruction, and its operatives are responsible for many of the suicide bombings of Israeli civilian targets. Then there is the Iran Freedom Support Act, designed to dry up foreign funds Iran can use to develop a nuclear bomb and to supply aid to anti-government groups there. No one at AIPAC, Gordon insists, is pressing for military action against Iran. Their goal is a strong diplomatic and economic response coordinated among the United States, its European allies, Russia and China.
Nonetheless, not everyone supports AIPAC's approach. The Conference of Catholic Bishops and several other charitable groups opposed the House-sponsored version of the Hamas bill, as did three liberal pro-Israel groups -- Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace. Opponents argued that the bill would isolate and punish Palestinian moderates and restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Bush administration issued talking points contending that the bill would tie its hands and that, in any case, it already had all the power it needed to restrict aid that might be channeled to Hamas.
At its annual conference in March, AIPAC dispatched hundreds of activists to more than 450 congressional offices to lobby for the measure. One of those targeted was Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat with a solid pro-Israel voting record who had opposed the bill in committee, citing the Catholic bishops' concerns. McCollum took offense after an AIPAC representative from Minneapolis confronted Bill Harper, her chief of staff, over her vote. Harper said the AIPAC rep told him that "McCollum's support for terrorists would not be tolerated."
"Never has my name and reputation been maligned or smeared as it was last week by a representative of AIPAC," McCollum complained in a letter to Howard Kohr, AIPAC's executive director. She called the remarks "hateful, vile and offensive," demanded that Kohr apologize and banned AIPAC representatives from her office until he did.
Kohr requested a meeting to talk it over. The AIPAC rep denied making the remarks. No one apologized, but McCollum eventually declared the incident over.
The bill passed the House, on the day before Olmert addressed Congress, by 361 to 37. A milder version of the bill unanimously passed the Senate late last month.
Like Congress, the Bush administration has also been an easy sell. Ever since George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, took a helicopter ride over the Israeli countryside with Sharon, Bush has felt a sense of kinship and concern. When Ambassador Ayalon phones the White House, he deals with Elliott Abrams, a longtime supporter of Israel who is deputy national security adviser. Ayalon, who used to be Sharon's foreign affairs adviser, has been to dinner at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's home and is on a first-name basis with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, presidential political strategist Karl Rove and the new White House chief of staff, Josh Bolten. Both sides say relations have never been closer.
There was a glitch in 2002 when Bush declared "enough is enough" and demanded that Sharon pull back Israeli forces from their siege of the West Bank, dispatching Colin Powell, then secretary of state, to negotiate a withdrawal. AIPAC helped organize congressional resolutions reaffirming solidarity with Israel that passed the Senate by 94 to 2 and the House by 352 to 21. Supporters organized a "Stand Up for Israel" rally in Washington in April that drew tens of thousands. The crowd booed senior Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's representative to the rally, when he told them "innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying in great numbers." And they cheered Janet Parshall, host of an evangelical Christian talk show, who declared: "We will never limp, we will never wimp, we will never vacillate in our support of Israel."
Bush stopped making his plea for withdrawal, and four days after the rally hailed Sharon as a "man of peace." Powell came home empty-handed.
Some people are not happy about the close ties between the Israel lobby and the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan. They complain that AIPAC and its sister groups have moved too far to the right and grown overly cozy with former House majority leader Tom DeLay and a Republican leadership now mired in scandal epitomized by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, once a big donor to Jewish causes. These groups, it is said, have lost touch with a majority of American Jews, who still skew liberal, vote Democratic and view Christian conservatives with abiding suspicion.
But the real deal-breaker for many -- including a pair of respected political scientists at two leading universities -- was the war in Iraq.
STEPHEN WALT'S OFFICE IN THE KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT IS COZY AND SEDATE, with a large desk and a set of sofas around a coffee table. There's even a fireplace in one wall, all rust-colored bricks and polished brass. Walt says he's never actually used it. Nowadays he wouldn't need to -- the essay he co-authored with fellow political scientist John Mearsheimer has created enough heat to keep the entire building at a swelter.
Tall, rangy and soft-spoken, Walt's the kind of multidimensional scholar who's as comfortable talking about the creative impulses of the Beatles as he is about American foreign policy. He's a man of gold-plated academic credentials: PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, teaching positions at Princeton University and the University of Chicago before joining the Kennedy School at Harvard as professor in international relations and academic dean. He and Mearsheimer, who were fellow academics at Chicago, are leading members of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, a Washington-based group of academics and former policymakers who believe the Bush administration's primary achievement has been to convince friend and foe alike that untrammeled American power poses one of the greatest threats to world peace and stability.
In the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, Walt and Mearsheimer published an article in Foreign Policy magazine in January 2003, titled "An Unnecessary War." It concluded that Iraqi leader Hussein was weak and eminently deterrable without resorting to force. They also organized a full-page ad in the New York Times in which they and 31 other scholars declared the impending conflict "a profound and costly mistake."
We went to war anyway, and many of Walt and Mearsheimer's most dire predictions came to pass. No one in government had listened to them. So what went wrong?
In previous works Walt had written about the role of ethnic lobbies in the making of foreign policy. His view: They tend to gum up the works. Israel and its lobby, he and Mearsheimer conclude, was the main factor that had sent American policy off the rails when it came to Iraq.
Their essay -- published in the London Review of Books and, in an extended version, on the Kennedy School's Web site -- thoroughly condemns the U.S.-Israel relationship. Since the Cold War ended, they contend, Israel has become a strategic liability that ignites terrorism against the West and serves as a rallying cry and recruitment poster for bin Laden and al-Qaeda. What's more, there's no particular moral reason for the United States to support Israel. Despite a well-cultivated myth, Israel has always been stronger militarily than neighboring Arab states, racist and discriminatory in treating its own non-Jewish citizens and brutal when it comes to the Palestinians. "The creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the Palestinian people," the essay states baldly.
As for the United States, it is the "de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians."
Why does Israel enjoy such uncritical American support? The lobby, say Walt and Mearsheimer. Nothing conspiratorial or improper, mind you. "For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise the Lobby are doing what other special interest groups do, just much better."
The lobby, according to Walt and Mearsheimer, has a free run in Congress. The media also play a role because they generally demur from criticizing Israeli policy. But the essay saves its hardest shot for the neoconservatives -- that group of pro-Israel ideologues, many of them Jewish, who steered the Bush administration toward the Iraq war. The neocons sought to transform the Middle East by overthrowing Hussein and spreading their brand of democracy to the region. They may have mistakenly believed they were furthering U.S. interests, the essay contends, but they were actually implementing an Israeli agenda. "Given the neoconservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it is not surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interest."
Listening to Walt, you get the sense that he believes there is one correct and objective foreign policy that an enlightened elite would be able to agree upon if only those grubby ethnic interest groups were not out there playing politics. When I ask him about this, he denies holding such an ivory tower view. For him it's a simple issue: "Absent the pressure from the Israel lobby, I don't think we would have gone to war with Iraq. We don't use the word 'hijack' because that's not the way policy gets done. But it wouldn't have happened without that set of institutions and individuals who had been pushing it for some time."
Still, he doesn't seem to allow for the possibility that foreign policy in a pluralistic democracy is inevitably the product of a noisy clash of interests, or that the success of Israel's supporters may stem from the country's popularity here or from American revulsion over Palestinian suicide bombings. Or for that matter that American opposition to the prospect of Iran achieving a nuclear bomb has little to do with Israel and more to do with American fears of ayatollahs with nukes.
Iran may be worrisome, says Walt, but no more so than previous threats. "My belief is we would not be contemplating preventive war if we did not have a powerful domestic interest group pushing this issue. We have lived with a number of really odious regimes having nuclear weapons, because we understood that we could deter them effectively with the weapons at our disposal."
When Walt and Mearsheimer published their essay, they were deluged with hundreds of e-mails and phone calls. Walt says the reactions he's received to the essay have been positive by a ratio of 4 to 1. Some were unwelcome: White supremacist David Duke said the essay vindicated his views, and other fringe commentators have invoked the paper to justify their claims of an American Jewish conspiracy.
Walt strongly disavows these claims. "There's a long and despicable historical tradition in the Christian West that when bad things happen, you blame the Jews, and I understand why some Jewish Americans are very sensitive on this point because I know it has a historical basis. We did our best to make it clear that is not what we were saying, that we were not accusing people of disloyalty or being part of any kind of conspiracy, that we reject those sorts of arguments and find them reprehensible.
"But I still believe that these are issues we have to be able to talk about in a calm and serious way even when there are strong passions involved. This was an issue that had been the elephant in the room for a long time, and it needed to be discussed openly."
"OKAY, SO TWO JEWS ARE ABOUT TO BE SHOT BY A NAZI SS OFFICER, and he asks if they have any final remarks. One Jew raises his hand to speak, but the other one says to him, 'Stop it -- aren't we in enough trouble already?' Well I'm not afraid of raising my hand."
The man raising his hand is Michael Oren, an American-born Israeli historian. He moved from New Jersey to Jerusalem in the late 1970s, served in the Israeli army, got his PhD from Hebrew University. He has written a bestseller, Six Days of War, is completing a history of U.S. engagement with the Holy Land and is spending the semester teaching at Harvard and Yale. He was also one of the first to condemn the Israel lobby essay in a piece published in the New Republic. Across the table at Bartley's, a Cambridge hamburger haven, is Shai Feldman, a fifth-generation Israeli who was head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel's premier strategic think tank, before taking over as director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Feldman has known Walt and Mearsheimer for more than two decades -- Walt helped hold up the ceremonial chuppah at Feldman's wedding -- and he has shied away from publicly attacking the essay, even though he finds it misguided and misinformed.
Oren's a bit to the right of center, and Feldman's a bit to the left, but they're both snugly in the Israeli mainstream. Which means they love to argue.
Feldman says he speaks more out of sorrow than anger about where his two friends may have gone wrong in their essay.
"Look, Israel didn't mobilize anybody over Iraq, and associating Israel with the neocons on this issue is preposterous," he says, helping himself to a french fry. "Israel didn't see Iraq as a danger, and, what's more, it had no interest in pushing the Bush administration's democracy agenda." The only prominent Israeli to champion that idea, says Feldman, is former cabinet minister Natan Sharansky, author of The Case for Democracy , a book that President Bush read and honored by inviting Sharansky to the White House to talk about it. But Sharansky's a lone wolf, says Feldman. "Believe me, that book has more readers in Washington than in Jerusalem."
So if Israel wasn't pushing directly for an invasion of Iraq, what about its American lobbyists?
AIPAC took no official position on the merits of going to war in Iraq, and staff members insist they did not lobby in favor of the 2002 war resolution. But, like the Israeli government, once it was clear that the Bush administration was determined to go to war, AIPAC cheered from the sidelines, bestowing sustained ovations on an array of administration officials at its April 2003 annual conference and on Bush himself when he attended the following year.
Oren, who has studied the subject for years, believes the animosity toward the Israel lobby goes deeper than policy. He even raises the possibility that Walt and Mearsheimer are anti-Semites.
"You have to differentiate between them and their argument," Feldman replies. "They're not anti-Semites even if they have slid into an anti-Semitic argument. I think it all comes from their failure to prevent the war on Iraq."
Oren: "So they come up with this truly unique notion of blaming the Jews!"
Oren sees the essay as an evil that needs to be condemned. But Feldman argues that "the ties between Israel and the United States are so robust this essay won't damage them. And to make into martyrs a couple of academics with a lousy paper would only prove their point."
What becomes clear after a while is that the differences between Feldman and Oren aren't between left and right, but between a longtime Israeli and a newcomer. "In the '50s when Israel was precarious, things might have looked different," says Feldman. "But today Israel is strong, and people can ask questions that are considered heretical here. To portray Israel as a leaf hanging in the wind is almost to say it has not succeeded."
Oren on the other hand is a first-generation immigrant who used to get chased home from school in West Orange, N.J., because he was Jewish. His Israel is more
slender and endangered and needs to be constantly vigilant, despite having one of the world's strongest armies.
"All these tanks and planes -- you couldn't use them against suicide bombers," says Oren. "Even now the president of Iran talks about wiping Israel off the map. We're still vulnerable."
SOME OF THE ANGRIEST RESPONSES TO WALT AND MEARSHEIMER COME FROM AMERICAN JEWS who are singled out in the essay as members of the lobby. Douglas Feith, a former Pentagon official and neoconservative thinker who was a strong advocate for the Iraq war, says he's furious that the essay suggests he supported the war because it helped Israel's interests rather than those of the United States.
Then there is Dennis Ross, chief Middle East peace negotiator in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, an American Jew who is deeply committed to Israel's survival yet also believes in the legitimacy of a Palestinian state. Ross was the point man for the ill-fated Camp David peace summit in July 2000, in which Clinton failed to achieve a breakthrough with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Arafat. These days he's counselor and distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, one of the think tanks Walt and Mearsheimer describe as part of the Israel lobby.
Echoing Feldman and Oren, Ross insists that the essay is wrong to claim Israel had pushed for war in Iraq. If anything, the Israelis feared such a war would divert attention and resources from the Middle East's real danger -- Iran. Some Israelis even warned that toppling Hussein would lead to chaos in Iraq that would make the neighboring Iranians stronger. Which is, more or less, what has happened.
"It might have been better if they had gotten their facts straight," says Ross of Walt and Mearsheimer. "I don't say they're anti-Semitic, just that they're ignorant."
But it's more than that. Ross devoted a large chunk of his career to trying to broker peace in the Middle East. He doesn't like being branded as part of anyone's lobby and resents being lumped together with neocons like Feith, a longtime critic. "I would be dishonest if I said it didn't make me angry," Ross says. "It's so fallacious, and it will be used by those who want to say that American policy is somehow distorted and perverted."
IT'S A TUESDAY IN EARLY MARCH, and there are 5,000 people jammed at dining tables in the Washington Convention Center for AIPAC's annual gathering, including more than 50 senators and 100 House members and dozens of administration officials. Vice President Cheney gives a keynote address, as does John Bolton, the administration's fire-breathing ambassador to the United Nations. The Israeli election is coming up in a few days, and the leaders of the three major parties all appear via satellite hookup, including Ehud Olmert, who begins with a politician's prayer of thanksgiving: "Thank God we have you; thank God we have AIPAC."
The opening video montage begins with Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip; then shows angry crowds of Palestinians burning and looting the abandoned settlements; then the electoral triumph of the radical Islamist group Hamas; then mayhem in Iraq; images of bin Laden; a parade of terror bombings in London, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and, finally, Israel; then a reference to the stroke that felled prime minister Sharon; then the harangue of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who cries that "Israel must be wiped off the map!" Violence, flames, angry dark-skinned young Muslims.
The message seems to be: A new Holocaust? It could happen.
DAVID BEN-GURION NEVER GOT TO SEE ROOSEVELT, but that didn't stop him from pressing ahead with his lifelong mission. After he left the United States in 1942, he returned to Palestine and oversaw the creation of the Jewish state. He became its first prime minister in 1948. Ben-Gurion declared Israel's independence at 6 p.m. Washington time on May 14. Eleven minutes later, the United States became the first nation to recognize the new state.
Ben-Gurion oversaw the building of Israel's powerful defense establishment, mixed economy and quarrelsome political system. But, for all his achievements, he suggested one simple way to measure a country's success that might be instructive to Walt and Mearsheimer, as well as to their critics. "The test of democracy," he wrote, "is freedom of criticism."
Or, as Morris Amitay put it when our interview ended: "It's been nice talking to you, and I look forward to sending a very critical letter to the editor after your article appears."
Glenn Frankel is a staff writer for the Magazine and The Post's former Jerusalem bureau chief. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon.
Additional about the Mearsheimer/Walt paper on the pro-Israel lobby at the following URL (scroll down to the 'Pro-Israel lobby under attack' UPI article there):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
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The above article by Glenn Frankel didn't convey that Morris Amitay was/is also associated with the JEWISH INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS (JINSA) which wanted/wants to go after Iraq, Syria, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1007
Morris Amitay, a longtime legislative assistant in Congress and lobbyist for the influential American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, is an adviser to Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy and the vice chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a U.S.-based pro-Likud advocacy outfit that specializes in connecting U.S. military brass to their counterparts in the Israeli armed forces. JINSA associates include Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Michael Leeden, David Steinmann, James Woolsey, Stephen Bryen, and Richard Perle, among other leading U.S. neoconservatives and retired U.S. military officials.
According to a profile prepared by the American Enterprise Institute, Amitay "has helped in the contribution of more than two million dollars to congressional candidates on a bipartisan basis over the past two decades." (8) In an article in The Jewish Week following the 2002 defeat of Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) and Rep. Earl Hilliard (D-Alabama), Amitay, the founder of the hardline pro-Israel Washington PAC, noted that both incumbents were particularly vulnerable because of their criticism of Israeli policies. The article led with the line: "The score is now Jewish activists 2, anti-Israel members of Congress 0." (7)
Amitay is also a member of the large wing of neoconservative commentators who advocate broader U.S. intervention in the Middle East, particularly in Iran. In 2003, Amitay and fellow neocon Michael Ledeen founded the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, an advocacy group pushing for regime change in Iran. According to the Coalition's web site, "The Islamic Republic as a whole must be held accountable for its actions. Engaging reformists tied only to the regime is counterproductive since it stifles the growth of more democratic forces inside Iran. Perpetuating the behavior of the current regime fundamentally undermines U.S. moral values and national security interests." (5)
During a May 2003 conference at the American Enterprise Institute on the future of Iran, Amitay sharply criticized the U.S. State Department's efforts to engage the Islamic Republic, saying that Newt Gingrich's much publicized lambasting of State and Colin Powell had not gone far enough. Clearly eager to see the United States take direct action against Iran, Amitay, who was introduced by Michael Ledeen as the "godfather" of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, grudgingly acknowledged that such action would be difficult before the 2004 presidential elections: "As far as the administration is concerned, I think we have to concede that from now until November of 2004, the presidential reelection will be a very, very high priority, and that having taken on Iraq, I don't think that this administration or any administration would want to undertake the use of force for regime change anywhere else in the world. So I think what we will see is what we saw for most of Clinton's eight years, a policy of kicking the can down the road, a hoping for the best, making tactical decisions, no really decisive, bold decisions."
Regarding the State Department, Amitay said:
"The role of the State Department, then, with the White House I think paying less attention to Iran than it deserves, will be crucial. Now, I was preempted by Newt Gingrich, from this very position, but I think that Newt was not tough enough in his criticism of State, and I think I can do so because of some of my own experiences.
"I think at this point it's not enough to say that the Secretary of State is just a captive of the State Department. After a couple of years, the bonds have been loosened, and I think that he's basically acting a great deal on his own, and I think there's a certain mind-set in dealing with adversaries of our country that having an instinct for the capillaries is not enough. We did not finish the job in '91. Thankfully, we did so now, and I don't think the State Department distinguished itself in the run up to the war in Iraq with regard to relations with Turkey, handling the United Nations, relationship with France, et cetera. . .
"In a state mind-set, no tyrannical regime can't be made a friend by showing our own good will, politeness, process and accommodation, as Gingrich put it. . .
"Now, you have the Congress. The Congress is more action oriented. The culture of Capitol Hill is to pass bills and resolutions, appropriate funds, and they have to face the voters. They are accountable. But Congress, because of this, they're held in contempt by people in the State Department. The worst assignment a Foreign Service Officer can get is to accompany a congressional delegation when they come visiting.
"The Congress is held in contempt by the State Department. They are know-nothings. They're a bunch of yahoos...simplisma. They don't have the sophistication. Some members of Congress are flattered by the State Department as being one of us, and as we go to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with Senator Brownback's initiatives, we're going to have some problems with some of the leading members." (6)
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Sources
(1) Center for Security Policy: National Security Advisory Council
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?sectionfiltered=static&page=nsac
(2) Jim Lobe, "Veteran Neocon Adviser Moves on Iran," Asia Times, June 26, 2003
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html
(3) 2001 Jackson Award Remarks, JINSA
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1366/documentid/1385/history/3,2166,1366,1385
(4) United States Government Lawyer's Profiles Section, Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, 2003
(5) Coalition for Democracy in Iran
http://www.c-d-i.org/index.shtml
(6) Transcript of "The Future of Iran," American Enterprise Institute conference, May 6, 2003
http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.300/transcript.asp
(7) Sharon Sambler, "Congresswoman's Defeat Seen as Victory for Jewish Activists," The Jewish Week, August 23, 2003
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=6600
(8) "The Future of Iran: Speaker Biographies," American Enterprise Institute
www.aei.org/publications/pubID.16973/pub_detail.asp | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:22 am Post subject: Neocons Resurrect Plans For Regional War In The Middle East |
| Neocons Resurrect Plans For Regional War In The Middle East
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/17/neocons-middle-east-war/
In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser (all later senior officials in the Bush administration) had a plan for how to destroy Hezbollah: Invade Iraq. They wrote a report to the newly elected Likud government in Israel calling for “a clean break” with the policies of negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace.
The problem could be solved “if Israel seized the strategic initiative along it northern borders by engaging Hizballah (sic), Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon.” The key, they said, was to “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” They called for “reestablishing the principle of preemption.” They promised that the successes of these wars could be used to launch campaigns against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, reshaping “the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly.”
Now, with the U.S. bogged down in Iraq, with Bush losing control of world events, and with the threats to national security growing worse, no one could possibly still believe this plan, could they? Think again.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, is still pushing this radical vision. He now uses the excuse of Hezbollah terrorist attacks — what he calls “Iran’s Proxy War” — to push the United States deeper into a regional war against Iran and Syria:
We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions — and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.
Perle has already weighed in in a June 25 Washington Post editorial decrying Bush’s “ignominious retreat” on Iran. He, too, wants war. Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press this Sunday said we were already in World War III and that the US needed to take direct action against North Korea and Iran. Less well known pundits have flooded cable news and talk radio this weekend beating the war drums. Meanwhile, David Wurmser is ensconced in Vice-President Cheney’s office, and his neoconservative colleague Elliot Abrams (the convicted Iran-Contra felon who urged war with Iraq in a 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton) directs Middle East policy on the National Security Council staff.
The neoconservatives are now hoping to use the Israeli-Lebanon conflict as the trigger to launch a U.S. war against Syria, Iran or both. These profoundly dangerous policies have to be exposed and stopped before they do even more harm to U.S. national security then they already have.
– Joseph Cirincione
(For more, see “Origins of Regime Change in Iraq“)
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1214&prog=zgp&proj=znpp
Origins of Regime Change in Iraq
By Joseph Cirincione
Proliferation Brief, Volume 6, Number 5
Long before September 11, before the first inspections in Iraq had started, a small group of influential officials and experts in Washington were calling for regime change in Iraq. Some never wanted to end the 1991 war. Many are now administration officials. Their organization, dedication and brilliance offer much to admire, even for those who disagree with the policies they advocate.
We have assembled on our web site links to the key documents produced since 1992 by this group, usually known as neo-conservatives, and analysis of their efforts. They offer a textbook case of how a small, organized group can determine policy in a large nation, even when the majority of officials and experts originally scorned their views.
In the Beginning
In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then-under secretary of defense for policy, supervised the drafting of the Defense Policy Guidance document. Wolfowitz had objected to what he considered the premature ending of the 1991 Iraq War. In the new document, he outlined plans for military intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.
The guidance called for preemptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions but said that the U.S. should be ready to act alone when "collective action cannot be orchestrated." The primary goal of U.S. policy should be to prevent the rise of any nation that could challenge the United States. When the document leaked to the New York Times, it proved so extreme that it had to be rewritten. These concepts are now part of the new U.S. National Security Strategy.
Links to Likud
In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, now administration officials, joined in a report to the newly elected Likud government in Israel calling for "a clean break" with the policies of negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace. They said "Israel can shape its strategic environment…by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq…Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly." They called for "reestablishing the principle of preemption."
In 1998, 18 prominent conservatives wrote a letter to President Clinton urging him to "aim at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power." Most of these experts are now officials in the administration, including Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
The Power of Planning
In 2000, the Project for the New American Century, which is chaired by William Kristol and includes Robert Kagan as a director, issued a report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." The Project had organized the 1998 letter to Clinton and the 2000 report seems to have become a blueprint for the administration's foreign and defense policies. The report noted, "The U.S. has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in the Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
While not explicitly calling for permanent bases in Iraq after regime change, the report notes the difficulty of basing forces in Saudi Arabia, given "Saudi domestic sensibilities," and calls for a permanent Gulf military presence even "should Saddam pass from the scene" as "Iran may well prove as large a threat."
The official National Security Strategy of the United States, issued September 2002, holds that our defense "will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia."
A Rising Chorus
Immediately after September 11, Paul Wolfowitz and other officials urged President Bush to attack Iraq. New Yorker writer Mark Danner notes as part of a PBS Frontline special that they saw this as a "new opportunity presented by the war on terror-that is, an opportunity to argue to the public that Iraq presented a vital danger to the United States." Colin Powell and the joint chiefs opposed them. "Powell's view was that Wolfowitz was fixated on Iraq, that they were looking for any excuse to bring Iraq into this," Washington Post reporter Dan Balz told Frontline. Powell won, but briefly.
Neo-conservative writers began to urge regime change as part of a larger strategy for remaking the Middle East. In June 2002, Michael Kelly wrote that a democratic Iraq and Palestine "will revolutionize the power dynamic in the Middle East…A majority of Arabs will come to see America as the essential ally."
"Change toward democratic regimes in Tehran and Baghdad would unleash a tsunami across the Islamic world," claimed Joshua Muravchik in August of that year. Michael Ledeen on September 4, 2002, called for the US to launch "a vast democratic revolution to liberate all the peoples of the Middle East…It is impossible to imagine that the Iranian people would tolerate tyranny in their own country once freedom had come to Iraq. Syria would follow in short order."
Democracy experts, including Carnegie's Tom Carothers, call this vision "a dangerous fantasy." But on September 12, President Bush embraced the strategy when he told the United Nations, "The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world." The president seems to have absorbed the entire expansive strategy. Now, for him, regime change in Iraq is not the end, it is just the beginning.
Click here for all these documents and more insight into the people and strategy behind the occupation of Iraq.
Joseph Cirincione is a Senior Associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East (for Israel!):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/17/we-re-being-set-up-for-wider-war-in-the-middle-east.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:47 am Post subject: |
| http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/071706.html
The Abyss Beckons
By Robert Parry
July 18, 2006
The Israel-Lebanon conflict has opened up a possible route for George W. Bush and his neoconservative strategists to achieve a prized goal that otherwise appeared to be blocked for them – military assaults on Syria and Iran aimed at crippling those governments.
After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 – after only three weeks of fighting – the question posed by some Bush administration officials was whether the U.S. military should go “left or right,” to Syria or Iran. Some joked that “real men go to Tehran.”
According to the neocon strategy, “regime change” in Syria and Iran, in turn, would undermine Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that controls much of southern Lebanon, and would strengthen Israel’s hand in dictating peace terms to the Palestinians.
But the emergence of a powerful insurgency in Iraq – and a worsening situation for U.S. forces in Afghanistan – stilled the neoconservative dream of making George W. Bush a modern-day Alexander conquering the major cities of the Middle East, one after another.
Bush’s invasion of Iraq also unwittingly enhanced the power of Iran’s Shiite government by eliminating its chief counterweight, the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein. With Iran’s Shiite allies in control of the Iraqi government and a Shiite-led government also in Syria, the region’s balance between the two rival Islamic sects was thrown out of whack.
The neocon dream of “regime change” in Syria and Iran never died, however. It stirred when Bush accused Syria of assisting Iraqi insurgents and when he insisted that Iran submit its nuclear research to strict international controls. The border conflict between Israel and Lebanon now has let Bush toughen his rhetoric again against Syria and Iran.
In an unguarded moment during the G-8 summit in Russia on July 17, Bush – speaking with his mouth full of food and annoyed by suggestions about United Nations peacekeepers – told British Prime Minister Tony Blair “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.”
Not realizing that a nearby microphone was turned on, Bush also complained about suggestions for a cease-fire and an international peacekeeping force. “We’re not blaming Israel and we’re not blaming the Lebanese government,” Bush said, suggesting that the blame should fall on others, presumably Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
Meanwhile, John Bolton, Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the United States would only accept a multilateral U.N. force if it had the capacity to take on Hezbollah's backers in Syria and Iran.
“The real problem is Hezbollah,” Bolton said. “Would it [a U.N. force] be empowered to deal with countries like Syria and Iran that support Hezbollah?” [NYT, July 18, 2006]
Strategy Meetings
Though the immediate conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was touched off by a Hezbollah cross-border raid on July 12 that captured two Israeli soldiers, the longer-term U.S.-Israeli strategy can be traced back to the May 23, 2006, meetings between Olmert and Bush in Washington.
At those meetings, Olmert discussed with Bush Israel’s plans for revising its timetable for setting final border arrangements with the Palestinians, putting those plans on the back burner while moving the Iranian nuclear program to the front burner.
In effect, Olmert informed Bush that 2006 would be the year for stopping Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb and 2007 would be the year for redrawing Israel’s final borders. That schedule fit well with Bush’s priorities, which may require some dramatic foreign policy success before the November congressional elections.
At a joint press conference with Bush on May 23, Olmert said “this is a moment of truth” for addressing Iran’s alleged ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.
“The Iranian threat is not only a threat to Israel, it is a threat to the stability of the Middle East and the entire world,” Olmert said. “The international community cannot tolerate a situation where a regime with a radical ideology and a long tradition of irresponsible conduct becomes a nuclear weapons state.”
Olmert also said he was prepared to give the Palestinians some time to accept Israel’s conditions for renewed negotiations on West Bank borders, but – if Palestinian officials didn’t comply – Israel was prepared to act unilaterally.
The prime minister said Israel would “remove most of the [West Bank] settlements which are not part of the major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria. The settlements within the population centers would remain under Israeli control and become part of the state of Israel, as part of the final status agreement.”
In other words, Israel would annex some of the most desirable parts of the West Bank regardless of Palestinian objections. That meant the Israelis would need to soften up Hamas, the Islamic militants who won the last Palestinian elections, and their supporters in the Islamic world – especially Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
In a speech to a joint session of Congress, Olmert added that the possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon was “an existential threat” to Israel, meaning that Israel believed its very existence was in danger.
Nuclear Face-Off
Even before the May 23 meetings, Bush was eyeing a confrontation with Iran as part of his revised strategy for remaking the Middle East. Bush was staring down Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over demands Iran back off its nuclear research.
By spring 2006, Bush was reportedly weighing military options for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the President encountered resistance from senior levels of the U.S. military, which feared the consequences, including the harm that might come to more than 130,000 U.S. troops bogged down in neighboring Iraq.
There was also alarm among U.S. generals over the White House resistance to removing tactical nuclear weapons as an option against Iran.
As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, a number of senior U.S. officers were troubled by administration war planners who believed “bunker-busting” tactical nuclear weapons, known as B61-11s, were the only way to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities buried deep underground.
“Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. “‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”
This former official said the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they’re shouted down,” the ex-official said. [New Yorker, April 17, 2006]
By late April, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.
“Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” one former senior intelligence official said.
But – even without the nuclear option – senior military officials still worried about a massive bombing campaign against Iran. Hersh wrote:
“Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.”
Hersh quoted a retired four-star general as saying, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ” [New Yorker, July 10, 2006]
The most immediate concern of U.S. military leaders was that air strikes against Iran could prompt retaliation against American troops in Iraq. U.S. military trainers would be especially vulnerable since they work within Iraqi military and police units dominated by Shiites who are sympathetic to Iran.
Iran also could respond to a bombing campaign by cutting off oil supplies, sending world oil prices soaring and throwing the world economy into chaos.
Israel’s Arsenal
While the Joint Chiefs may have had success in getting the White House to remove the use of nuclear weapons from its list of options on Iran, the rising tensions between Israel and Iran may have put the nuclear option back on the table – since Israel has the largest and most sophisticated nuclear arsenal in the Middle East.
As Hersh reported, “The Israelis have insisted for years that Iran has a clandestine program to build a bomb, and will do so as soon as it can. Israeli officials have emphasized that their ‘redline’ is the moment Iran masters the nuclear fuel cycle, acquiring the technical ability to produce weapons-grade uranium.”
In spring 2006, Iran announced that it had enriched uranium to the 3.6 percent level sufficient for nuclear energy but well below the 90-percent level for making atomic bombs. The U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran is still years and possibly a decade away from the capability of building a nuclear bomb.
Still, Iran’s technological advance convinced some Israeli strategists that it was imperative to destroy Iran’s program now. Yet to do so, Israel faces the same need for devastating explosive power, thus raising the specter again of using a nuclear bomb.
One interpretation of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict is that Bush and Olmert seized on the Hezbollah raid as a pretext for a pre-planned escalation that will lead to bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran, justified by their backing of Hezbollah.
In that view, Bush found himself stymied by U.S. military objections to targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities outside any larger conflict. However, if the bombing of Iran develops as an outgrowth of a tit-for-tat expansion of a war in which Israel’s existence is at stake, strikes against Iranian targets would be more palatable to the American public.
The end game would be U.S.-Israeli aerial strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities with the goal of crippling its nuclear program and humiliating Ahmadinejad.
Strangling an Axis
While U.S. officials have been careful not to link the Lebanon conflict to any possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, they have spoken privately about using the current conflict to counter growing Iranian influence.
Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that “for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East. …
“Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants – with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.
“‘What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat [running] through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas,’ said a senior U.S. official.” [Washington Post, July 16, 2006]
Another school of thought holds that Iran may have encouraged the Hezbollah raid that sparked the Lebanese-Israeli conflict as a way to demonstrate the “asymmetrical warfare” that could be set in motion if the Bush administration attacks Iran.
But Hezbollah’s firing of rockets as far as the port city of Haifa, deep inside Israel, has touched off new fears among Israelis and their allies about the danger of more powerful missiles carrying unconventional warheads, possibly hitting heavily populated areas, such as Tel Aviv.
That fear of missile attacks by Islamic extremists dedicated to Israel’s destruction has caused Israel to start “dusting off it nukes,” one source told me.
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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.' | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
