| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 9:17 am Post subject: The Neocons' Next War (for Israel) |
| The neocons' next war:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/03/mideast/
The neocons' next war
By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Aug. 03, 2006 | The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.
Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have been "briefed" and to be "on board," but she is not a central actor in pushing the covert neoconservative scenario. Her "briefing" appears to be an aspect of an internal struggle to intimidate and marginalize her. Recently she has come under fire from prominent neoconservatives who oppose her support for diplomatic negotiations with Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weaponry.
Rice's diplomacy in the Middle East has erratically veered from initially calling on Israel for "restraint," to categorically opposing a cease-fire, to proposing terms for a cease-fire guaranteed to conflict with the European proposal, and thus to thwarting diplomacy, prolonging the time available for the Israeli offensive to achieve its stated aim of driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. But the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a "cleansing war" with Syria and Iran, says the national security official, which somehow will redeem Bush's beleaguered policy in the entire region.
In order to try to understand the neoconservative road map, senior national security professionals have begun circulating among themselves a 1996 neocon manifesto against the Middle East peace process. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," its half-dozen authors included neoconservatives highly influential with the Bush administration -- Richard Perle, first-term chairman of the Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser, Cheney's chief Middle East aide.
"A Clean Break" was written at the request of incoming Likud Party Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and intended to provide "a new set of ideas" for jettisoning the policies of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Instead of trading "land for peace," the neocons advocated tossing aside the Oslo agreements that established negotiations and demanding unconditional Palestinian acceptance of Likud's terms, "peace for peace." Rather than negotiations with Syria, they proposed "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." They also advanced a wild scenario to "redefine Iraq." Then King Hussein of Jordan would somehow become its ruler; and somehow this Sunni monarch would gain "control" of the Iraqi Shiites, and through them "wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria."
Netanyahu, at first, attempted to follow the "clean break" strategy, but under persistent pressure from the Clinton administration he felt compelled to enter into U.S.-led negotiations with the Palestinians. In the 1998 Wye River accords, concluded through the personal involvement of President Clinton and a dying King Hussein, the Palestinians agreed to acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel and Netanyahu agreed to withdraw from a portion of the occupied West Bank. Further negotiations, conducted by his successor Ehud Barak, that nearly settled the conflict ended in dramatic failure, but potentially set the stage for new ones.
At his first National Security Council meeting, President George W. Bush stunned his first secretary of state, Colin Powell, by rejecting any effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. When Powell warned that "the consequences of that could be dire, especially for the Palestinians," Bush snapped, "Sometimes a show for force by one side can really clarify things." He was making a "clean break" not only with his immediate predecessor but also with the policies of his father.
In the current Middle East crisis, once again, the elder Bush's wise men have stepped forward to offer unsolicited and unheeded advice. (In private they are scathing.) Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and Syria and now the director of the James Baker Institute at Rice University, urged on July 23, on CNN, negotiations with Syria and Iran. "I come from the school of diplomacy that you negotiate conflict resolution and peace with your enemies and adversaries, not with your friends," he said. "We've done it in the past, we can do it again."
Charles Freeman, the elder Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, remarked, "The irony now is that the most likely candidate to back Hezbollah in the long term is no longer Iran but the Arab Shiite tyranny of the majority we have installed in Baghdad." Indeed, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came to Washington in the last week of July he preceded his visit with harsh statements against Israel. And in a closed meeting with U.S. senators, when asked to offer criticism of Hezbollah, he steadfastly refused.
Richard Haass, the Middle East advisor on the elder Bush's National Security Council and President Bush's first-term State Department policy planning director, and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, openly scoffed at Bush's Middle East policy in an interview on July 30 in the Washington Post: "The arrows are all pointing in the wrong direction. The biggest danger in the short run is it just increases frustration and alienation from the United States in the Arab world. Not just the Arab world, but in Europe and around the world. People will get a daily drumbeat of suffering in Lebanon and this will just drive up anti-Americanism to new heights." When asked about the president's optimism, he replied, "An opportunity? Lord, spare me. I don't laugh a lot. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what's Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?"
The same day that Haass' comments appeared Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security advisor and still his close friend, published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post written more or less as an open letter to his erstwhile and errant protégé Condoleezza Rice. Undoubtedly, Scowcroft reflects the views of the former President Bush. Adopting the tone of an instructor to a stubborn pupil, Scowcroft detailed a plan for an immediate end to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict and for restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, "the source of the problem." His program is a last attempt to turn the president back to the ways of his father. If the elder Bush and his team were in power and following the Scowcroft plan, a cease-fire would have been declared. But Scowcroft's plan resembles that of the Europeans, already rejected by the Bush administration, and Rice is the one offering a counterproposal that has put diplomacy into a stall.
Despite Rice's shunning of the advice of the Bush I sages, the neoconservatives have made her a convenient target in their effort to undermine all diplomatic initiatives. "Dump Condi," read the headline in the right-wing Insight Magazine on July 25. "Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration's national security and foreign policy agenda," the article reported. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a member of the Defense Policy Board, was quoted: "We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you're doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you'll get out of us is talk."
A month earlier, Perle, in a June 25 Op-Ed in the Washington Post, revived an old trope from the height of the Cold War, accusing those who propose diplomacy of being like Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried to appease Hitler. "Condoleezza Rice," wrote Perle, "has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away. What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice's influence on the president is undiminished. It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of and increasingly represents a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries."
Rice, agent of the nefarious State Department, is supposedly the enemy within. "We are in the early stages of World War III," Gingrich told Insight. "Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don't have the right attitude."
Confused, ineffectual and incapable of filling her office with power, Rice has become the voodoo doll that Powell was in the first term. Even her feeble and counterproductive gestures toward diplomacy leave her open to the harshest attacks from neoconservatives. Scowcroft and the Bush I team are simply ignored. The sustained assault on Rice is a means to an end -- restoring the ascendancy of neoconservatism.
Bush's rejection of and reluctance to embrace the peace process concluded with the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. This failure was followed by a refusal to engage Hamas, potentially splitting its new governmental ministers from its more radical leadership in Damascus. Predictably, the most radical elements of Hamas found a way to lash out. And Hezbollah seized the moment by staging its own provocation.
Having failed in the Middle East, the administration is attempting to salvage its credibility by equating Israel's predicament with the U.S. quagmire in Iraq. Neoconservatives, for their part, see the latest risk to Israel's national security as a chance to scuttle U.S. negotiations with Iran, perhaps the last opportunity to realize the fantasies of "A Clean Break."
By using NSA intelligence to set an invisible tripwire, the Bush administration is laying the condition for regional conflagration with untold consequences -- from Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Israel. Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot.
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Sy Hersh's latest article (linked below) also mentioned Elliot Abrams who is a rabid Israel first Zionist Jew (see the article about him linked in the left margin of the following URL):
http://nowarforisrael.com/Rachel%20Corrie.htm
Additional on Elliot Abrams:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/19/elliot-abrams-tomorrow-s-lobby-for-israel-has-got-to.php
Bamford discusses 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda on MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann':
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/07/bamford-discusses-a-clean-break-on-msnbc-s-countdown.php
The following article is right in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' agenda as 'A Clean Break' was written for Netanyahu who is apparently going to replace Olmert soon:
“Honor First”; the liberation of Lebanon:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14620.htm
Fwd: CAIR-NET: 'Israel Lobby' Authors to Speak at DC Press Club Forum:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/19/fwd-cair-net-israel-lobby-authors-to-speak-at-dc-press-c.php
New Yorker's Hersh: Bush Admin Helped Plan Israeli Offensive
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/13/new-yorker-s-hersh-bush-admin-helped-plan-israeli-offensive.php
Bush and Condi Clash over Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/09/bush-and-condi-clash-over-israel.php
Iran: The Next War (latest Bamford article for Rolling Stone magazine)
Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.
BY JAMES BAMFORD
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10962352/iran_the_next_war/1
Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/24/israeli-invasion-of-lebanon-planned-by-neocons-in-june.php
Neocons Ready to Send U.S. Troops to Lebanon:
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=482
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Losing the Three-Front War
by Patrick Seale
Middle East Online, 3 August 2006
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=17172
In a word of wise advice to pig-headed political leaders, Denis Healey, a former British Defence Secretary, used to say, "When you're in a hole, stop digging!" The United States and Israel are in a deep and dangerous hole. They urgently need to stop digging before the hole swallows them up.
They are fighting, and losing, on three fronts - Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. It seems that this is not enough for the more insane and hysterical among them who are clamouring to extend the war to Syria and Iran, and to the whole of what they like to call the "Islamo-Fascist" world. Israel denies it is involved in the Iraq war. But, in fact, it is as much part of that conflict as the United States is now part of the wars in Lebanon and Palestine. Israel participated in the strategic planning for the Iraq War, which was designed to remove any threat to it from the east. Its neocon friends in Washington egged on America and fabricated the phoney intelligence which persuaded a gullible President that smashing Iraq was necessary for America's security.
Three years later, the United States is up to its neck in the Iraqi quagmire, squandering billions of dollars and losing men at the rate of about one a day, but without the good sense or the will to hoist itself out of the hole.
The wars in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon are all inter-linked, as US abuses in Iraq provide a model for Israel's indiscriminate violence against civilians, and its breach of international humanitarian law. Israel is doing what the United States pioneered, when the world's superpower created conditions of international anarchy by destroying the checks and balances of the international system.
The pro-Israeli ideologues in Washington are still driven by the fantasy that the entire Middle East can be restructured by military force to suit US and Israeli interests - and the President, worried about the looming mid-term elections in November, is too stubborn and too ignorant to call a halt to this madness.
The wars in Lebanon and Palestine are US-Israeli wars, pre-planned jointly and waged in close strategic coordination. The Israelis do the fighting while the United States provides the funding, the weapons, and the political and diplomatic cover: delaying a ceasefire to give Israel time to "finish the job."
But the wars are not going their way. In both Lebanon and Gaza, Israel might achieve some tactical gains - like this week's commando raid on Baalbek - but a strategic victory is almost certainly unattainable.
Hezbollah and Hamas are not conventional armies which can be wiped out on a battlefield, nor are they terrorist organisations with no claim to recognition or respect. They are national resistance movements deeply rooted in the local populations they represent, whose rights and lives they seek to defend against Israel's repeated aggressions.
In Lebanon, Israel's immediate aim appears to be to drive Hezbollah and the local civilian population out of a 30 kilometre-wide stretch in the hope that an international force will then step in to disarm Hezbollah and protect Israel from further rocket attacks. This is a pipedream.
Occupying south Lebanon will not protect Israeli forces from further guerrilla attacks - such as drove them out in 2000 - and no country will send troops to fight Hezbollah on Israel's behalf. As the French have made clear, an international force can be deployed only with the consent of all parties, Hezbollah included, and only when peace is restored.
In the meantime, the villages of south Lebanon are being devastated by intense bombardment, while their panic-stricken inhabitants flee north as best they can - those that have not been buried in the rubble of their homes.
The moral and political cost to Israel of this ethnic cleansing and state terrorism is exceedingly high. Israel's contempt for Arab life and the laws of war has eroded the legitimacy it managed to achieve in its brief 58 years of existence. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of outraged and radicalized Arabs are itching to attack it.
This is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Israel's policy. By seeking to restore its dented deterrent capability by brutal means - by demanding the freedom to attack its enemies while denying them the freedom to hit back - leaves it increasingly vulnerable to asymmetrical warfare.
The wider US and Israeli aim of destroying Hezbollah and removing all trace of Syria or Iranian influence from Lebanon is an unattainable fantasy flying in the face of local realities. For historical, confessional and social reasons, because of a dense network of family and other ties, and because of shared strategic and security interests, Syria and Iran will always have far greater sway in Lebanon than Israel or the United States.
Whatever military surprises the next week or two may bring, it is already clear that hatred for Israel and disillusion with America will know no bounds, while Hezbollah will emerge stronger from the battle. By setting themselves impossible aims, Israel and the United States have guaranteed their own failure.
The United States is now at an important crossroads in its dealings with the Arab and Muslim world. Will it sink deeper into hostility or can it find the wisdom to correct its aim? There are experienced advisors in Washington who know what needs to be done - e.g., Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush senior, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser - but their voices are not heard in George W. Bush's White House.
Bush's Global War on Terrorism and his unconditional support for Israel have made him a host of enemies. No US President in modern times has been more reviled. The United States even seems incapable of disciplining its unruly Israeli protégé, as Secretary Rice learned to her cost this past week. She thought Israel's Prime Minister Olmert had promised her a 48-hour ceasefire, but Israel continued its bombardment unabashed. She told Shimon Peres, Israel's deputy premier, that a ceasefire could be obtained in days, and he contradicted her publicly saying Israel needed weeks.
Where then is America's global leadership? It has been flushed down the drain in what Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called a "culture of violence."
The choice facing President George W. Bush is stark. It is between continuing his backing for Israel's disastrous wars in Lebanon and Palestine - perhaps even extending the conflict to Iran and Syria - or calling a halt to such folly and asserting his leadership for peace.
This could be Bush's chance to rescue his presidency from failure. He must put America's great weight and his personal prestige behind a comprehensive regional settlement. It can be done and he has the time to do it. But to succeed, he will need to make a clean sweep of advisers who have put America in danger.
The problems of the region must be tackled frontally and together, because they are interlinked:
* The Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be resolved with the creation of an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
* The Israeli-Syrian conflict must be resolved with the return to Syria of the Golan.
* Lebanon must be rebuilt with a massive injection of aid and international guarantees for its future security.
* The United States must start a bilateral dialogue with Iran aimed at restoring diplomatic relations and recognising Iran's regional interests and security fears.
* Israel must give up its vain ambition to dominate the region militarily and should instead, safe within its 1967 borders, conclude peace treaties with the entire Arab world based on mutual respect and good neighbourliness.
Is this utopian vision the greatest pipedream of all? In the meantime the killing goes on, and everyone is a loser.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also ,Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire
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Last edited by Alpha on Sun Aug 20, 2006 7:50 am; edited 6 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 9:40 am Post subject: *Forward: US ripped by Israel for inaction on Syria |
| From: "Ronald"
Subject: *Forward: US ripped by Israel for inaction on Syria
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 23:08:16 -0400
I almost fell out of my seat reading the first paragraph. From the headline I expected another one of those articles slamming the Bush administration for not supporting Israeli aims to widen the war (excuse me, defend its security) to Syria.
Here it is, out in the open -- in the Jewish press at least-- Israel looking to the US to make sure the war doesn't spill into Syria, and the US, saying, no, we think a war with Syria to devastate the country (excuse me, for regime change in the interests of democracy no doubt) is opportune right now. After all, Syria borders on Lebanon. It shouldn't take much to involve such a close neighbor. That should make China and Russia wake up and move a little closer toward the causus belli we hope will take place in good time before we lose power.
I can almost hear the ridiculous Webster Tarpley opining that some mysterious cabal is forcing Bush to fight the clash of civilizations, not to mention the next world war. But the cabal is out in the open and clearly expressed, as the Forward quotes, by Daniel Pipes, a newspaper columnist and director of the Middle East Forum. We have learned that these crazies, like Michael Ledeen and William Kristol and suchlike others are the voice of the administration, expressing policy options that more and more and sooner rather than later are translated into action.
"Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different needs to be tried," Pipes wrote Tuesday in The New York Sun. "My suggestion? Shift attention to Syria from Lebanon, and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible for Hezbollah violence."
Pipes proposed warning Damascus that Syrian targets would be bombed each time Israel was hit by Hezbollah. "Such targets," he wrote, "could include the terrorist, military, and governmental infrastructures."
I'm wondering what Tarpley and others arguing for Illuminati control of the USG make of the NYT report, headlined: "Bush's Embrace of Israel Shows Gap With Father," (8.2.06) quoting Bush proclaiming to Sharon at their first White House meeting, saying out of nowhere: "I'll use force to protect Israel." A WH aide later remarked to a reporter, "I was like, whoa, where did this come from?"
Here's a chilling paragraph from the Forward story:
In recent internal discussions, according to one well-placed source who spoke on condition of anonymity, some administration officials went so far as to advocate that America encourage Israel to attack Syria in order to induce the fall of Assad's regime. It was impossible to corroborate that information with other independent sources, but some Israeli media reports suggested that officials in the Bush administration have encouraged Jerusalem to consider strikes against Syria. Several hawkish pro-Israel scholars and pundits, including Michael Oren and Daniel Pipes, have written columns in favor of such an approach.
---Ronald
News
U.S. Ripped For Inaction On Israeli, Syrian Front
By ORI NIR
August 4, 2006
WASHINGTON — As Jerusalem mobilizes reserves and Damascus puts its troops on the highest state of alert, the Bush administration is not taking overt steps to prevent Israel's war with Hezbollah from spilling over into Syria.
Even as Israeli officials repeatedly accuse Damascus of supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, Jerusalem insists it has no intentions of attacking Syria. In turn, spokesmen for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad are sending similar messages back in the other direction.
But both sides are suspicious of the other's intentions and are concerned about an armed conflict being sparked unintentionally.
In the past, when tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus approached a boiling point, the United States intervened, typically by sending an envoy with chilling messages for leaders in both countries. This time, however, despite Israeli requests for American intervention, the Bush administration has not sent a senior official to Syria and shows no signs of upgrading its low-level contact with Damascus.
Assad has declared a willingness to hold comprehensive talks with Israel, and Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz reportedly has pressed his government to explore the Syrian option. But elements in the Bush administration are said to oppose any steps to relieve the pressure on Syria.
In recent internal discussions, according to one well-placed source who spoke on condition of anonymity, some administration officials went so far as to advocate that America encourage Israel to attack Syria in order to induce the fall of Assad's regime. It was impossible to corroborate that information with other independent sources, but some Israeli media reports suggested that officials in the Bush administration have encouraged Jerusalem to consider strikes against Syria. Several hawkish pro-Israel scholars and pundits, including Michael Oren and Daniel Pipes, have written columns in favor of such an approach.
Top Israeli and American officials have disagreed repeatedly over the appropriate policy toward Syria. Upset over Syria's alleged support for anti-Israel terrorist groups and anti-American forces in Iraq, the Bush administration in the past several years has considered pushing for regime change in Damascus. Israel, on the other hand, continues to seek stability in Syria, viewing Assad as "the devil it knows" and objecting to the creation of a political void that could be filled by Islamists or by sheer chaos.
Some Israeli diplomats have been saying — both before the current crisis and in recent days — that the administration is making a mistake by not having a more nuanced policy toward Syria. Engagement with Syria, one Israeli diplomat said, does not necessarily have to lead to major rewards. America can pursue a modest, gradual process in which small carrots — or simply the holding back of sanctions — would be offered for small Syrian steps, the Israeli official said.
According to diplomatic sources in Israel and in Washington, in the past three weeks Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government has turned to the Bush administration to intervene with Syria, only to end up relying on other third parties because of the White House's policy of isolating Damascus.
"We have had incidents before, when Israel and Syria, unintentionally, stumbled into confrontation," said William Brown, former ambassador to Israel. Brown is now president of Hebrew University's Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace.
"People in such situations can do screwball things," Brown said. He noted that in the past small-scale attacks ended up ballooning into broader confrontations.
Last Tuesday night, Israel reportedly airlifted hundreds of soldiers by helicopters to attack Hezbollah bases in the Bekaa area, in northeast Lebanon, not far from the Syrian border. One poorly aimed bomb, Brown said, could spark an unintended confrontation that could be very difficult to contain.
The Israeli maneuvers came a day after Assad called on his army to maintain the highest level of alert. Speaking to troops while marking the annual "army day," Assad vowed to "assist the brothers" who are fighting Israel's occupation. "This is the time of the national patriotic resistance," he said, adding that "the resistance continues as long as our land is occupied and our rights are denied." On the day of the attacks, Israel's vice premier, Shimon Peres, speaking in Washington, said that he "is not impressed by the Syrian threat." Peres said that the Syrian military is weak and that its equipment is old. "I don't think that Syria will go for war," he flatly told reporters. He also taunted Assad by calling him "the son of a wise man," a reference to a late Syrian leader, Hafez Assad.
Syria is hearing the reassuring messages from Israel but is paying more attention to the belligerent bravado of the past three weeks, said Moshe Maoz, a leading Israeli expert on Syria.
"The Syrian government is very suspicious. It does not believe Israel's reassuring statements. The Syrians often suspect 'Zionist conspiracies,'" he said.
According to Maoz, America's insistence to isolate Syria and avoid any contact with Assad's regime is not in Israel's interest. "Israel needs an effective channel to Syria," he said. "But in recent years, America has become more of a spoiler than an arbitrator in trying to improve relations between Israel and Syria."
Like many other foreign policy experts, Maoz advocates harnessing the resolution of the current crisis to a broader resolution to Israel's conflict with Syria and the Palestinians. "The Syrians are ready for peace negotiations with Israel. Maybe it's time to try it," Maoz said.
But sources close to the White House say that the Bush administration rejects the idea of "rewarding" Damascus by facilitating negotiations with Jerusalem over the return of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967.
Barak Ben-Zur, a former senior officer in Israeli military intelligence and in Israel's Shin Bet internal security service, said that the Bush administration might be missing an opportunity by not taking advantage of Syria's current sense of vulnerability to extract Syrian concessions. "America has various issues to settle with the Syrians. It can apply pressure or offer enticements to get the Syrians to cooperate both on issues such as Iraq and on the current crisis," he said. "Why not try to manipulate them? Why not use this golden opportunity, when the Syrians feel threatened?"
According to Ben-Zur, "there certainly is a potential to work with now. Unfortunately, the Americans insist on having no direct dealing with Syria."
Some pro-Israel commentators, however, are arguing for a military response to Syrian support for Hezbollah.
"Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different needs to be tried," Pipes wrote Tuesday in The New York Sun. "My suggestion? Shift attention to Syria from Lebanon, and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible for Hezbollah violence."
Pipes proposed warning Damascus that Syrian targets would be bombed each time Israel was hit by Hezbollah. "Such targets," he wrote, "could include the terrorist, military, and governmental infrastructures."
Copyright 2006 © The Forward | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:25 pm Post subject: Bush Wants Wider War |
| http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/080206.html
Bush Wants Wider War
By Robert Parry
August 3, 2006
George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as an opportunity to expand the conflict into Syria and possibly achieve a long-sought “regime change” in Damascus, but Israel’s leadership balked at the scheme, according to Israeli sources.
One Israeli source said Bush’s interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered “nuts” by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has generally shared Bush’s hard-line strategy against Islamic militants.
After rebuffing Bush’s suggestion about attacking Syria, the Israeli government settled on a strategy of mounting a major assault in southern Lebanon aimed at rooting out Hezbollah guerrillas who have been firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.
In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post hinted at the Israeli rejection of Bush’s suggestion of a wider war in Syria. “Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria,” the newspaper reported.
On July 18, Consortiumnews.com reported that the Israel-Lebanon conflict had revived the Bush administration's neoconservative hopes that a new path had opened “to achieve a prized goal that otherwise appeared to be blocked for them – military assaults on Syria and Iran aimed at crippling those governments.”
The article went on to say:
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.' | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 5:35 am Post subject: The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance |
| The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH08Ak01.html
The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance
By Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke
The United States and France have produced a United Nations resolution of sorts aimed at ending the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, but the negotiations between US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton and France's Jean-Marc de La Sabliere nearly ended in disaster.
Through the course of a single week, the US and France came as close to a bitter split over Middle East policy as they had on the eve of the Iraq war. At issue in the confrontation was a US insistence that an international force (led by France) be deployed to Lebanon prior to the declaration of a ceasefire - a requirement the French thought ludicrous. They weren't the only ones.
"The position that we're taking in the UN is just nuts," a former
White House official close to the US decision-making process said during the negotiations. "The US wants to put international forces on the ground in the middle of the conflict, before there's a ceasefire. The reasoning at the White House is that the international force could weigh on the side of the Israelis - could enforce Hezbollah's disarmament."
All of this, this former official noted, "is covered over by this talk about how we need a substantive agreement that addresses the fundamental problems and that will last. But no one is willing to say exactly what this means."
A former US Central Intelligence Agency officer confirmed this view: "I am under the impression that [President] George [W] Bush and [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice were surprised when the Europeans disagreed with the US position - they were running around saying, 'But how can you disagree, don't you understand? Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.'"
The normally taciturn La Sabliere was particularly enraged when Bolton indirectly accused him of naivety. Responding to a reporter's question about the French position calling for a ceasefire prior to a troop deployment, Bolton was at his arrogant best: "I think it simplistic, among other things. I want somebody to address the problem on how to get a ceasefire with a terrorist organization."
Bolton then took a leaf from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's 2003 criticism of France and Germany as "old Europe" - calling the French ceasefire initiative "old thinking". La Sabliere not only bristled at Bolton's language, he threatened to end all discussions with the US over ending the Lebanon conflict.
While Bolton and La Sabliere eventually buried their differences, the US-French face-off reflected deep-rooted and long-lasting French resentments over America's apparent willingness to allow the conflict to run its course - under the belief that it is only a matter of time before Israel destroyed Hezbollah.
"The Bush people have never heard a shot fired in anger, and it's apparent," an official in the UN Secretary General's Office noted. "The French were quite fearful that one miscalculation, one stray rocket could set the region on fire. No one in Washington seemed willing to admit that as a possibility."
Bolton's continued "cheerleading for Israel" didn't help, according to this same official. "It's a real row that started with Bolton's statement that you couldn't compare the deaths of Lebanese to the deaths of Israelis," the official said. "He implied that because Lebanon harbored Hezbollah, Lebanese lives were forfeit. It was a stupid thing to say. It tore the scab off the wound."
Bolton refused to back down, reiterating that the death of Lebanese civilians, while "tragic and unfortunate", was understandable considering Israel's right to "self-defense". In any event, Bolton went on to say, Israel did not "desire" the deaths of innocents - unlike Hezbollah.
The US press was quick to pick up on this, parroting the administration's line. Even the venerable Washington Post implied that seven Canadians who had died as a result of Israeli air strikes in the war's first days were of lesser value than other Westerners - since they were "Lebanese holding Canadian passports".
The French, as well as the British, also resented what they viewed as Israel's "high-handed" lecturing of the Europeans on their own constituent problems. The European anger boiled over, according to one UN diplomat, during an exchange between Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman and a French official during a meeting on the composition of a proposed international force.
While the diplomat would not recount the words used by Gillerman, he confirmed that the phrases Gillerman used "he repeated in the media". The diplomat was referring to Gillerman's remarks during an appearance on CNN, where he was spurred on by host Anderson Cooper's comparison of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to Adolf Hitler. "I certainly hope the world understands [that] this war is not just about the safety of Israel or the freedom of Lebanon, it is about preserving civilization as we know it," Gillerman said.
"When you see Hezbollah flags in London and in Brussels and in Paris and you see that most of the demonstrators in Trafalgar Square and in the other cities are Muslims, I would advise these European countries to look very carefully at what is happening in Beirut today because to a very great extent, what they're seeing in Beirut, what they're seeing happening in Lebanon, what Hezbollah has done to the Lebanese people is really just a preview of what they may expect if they don't take care of that problem as they say in this country, soon to be seen in theaters everywhere."
Even the British were enraged: "Take care of that problem? Take care of that problem? What would Ambassador Gillerman suggest we do with our Muslims? That's a hell of a thing for him to say," a British member of parliament sputtered.
Bolton's inflammatory statements, US insistence on the deployment of an international force prior to a ceasefire, and Gillerman's offensive hectoring of European diplomats deepened French suspicions over US-Israeli aims at the height of negotiations over a UN resolution.
But despite his offensive characterizations of the Muslim problem, Gillerman is right in one sense - the shifting demographics of Europe, where Muslim minorities constitute increasingly powerful voting blocs, is beginning to exact a toll on America's long-standing ties with its erstwhile allies. The French, in particular, are painfully aware that their Muslim minorities are capable of making their presence felt, particularly if they believe their political grievances are not being aired.
"The difference between the US and Europe on how to handle the Middle East is stark," a Finnish diplomat said during a recent private meeting in Washington. "In the US your political parties worry about the Jewish vote - in Europe, political parties worry about the Muslim vote. It's just that simple."
Some of these concerns, and the divide that Europe's new demographics are cleaving between Washington and European capitals, is now finally beginning to make its way into the press. At issue is US and Israeli terminology, which tends to paint Muslims as terrorists and Israelis as Westerners fighting for civilization.
"It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism," UN deputy secretary Mark Malloch Brown said last Tuesday. His voice edged with anger, Brown hinted that the United Kingdom could be forced to rethink its by now predictable support for the US initiative.
"Britain has tried very, very hard to keep with the US on this; no one respects the reasons for that entirely, but you have a Security Council and international public opinion, while fully understanding what has been done to Israel, now believes strongly in a cessation to hostilities."
After hesitating for only a moment, Brown issued a warning on a future British vote - stating almost baldly that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government might decide to side with Europe over the United States. "This is where the UK is a crucial swing vote," he said. "When it comes behind a cessation of hostilities, it makes it that much harder for the last stalwarts to hold out."
The Saturday announcement that France and the United States had agreed on a draft resolution has not helped to allay these growing fears. The draft resolution finesses the divide between America's call for the deployment of an international force and France's call for a ceasefire - saying that there should be a "full cessation of hostilities" prior to the tabling of a second resolution, which will deal with the more difficult political issues posed by the Israeli-Hezbollah war.
In truth, a number of UN diplomats concede that the battle between the US and France inside the Security Council only diverted the attention of both countries from the conflict in the Middle East. Getting Arab nations to sign on to the resolution was postponed in order to get the resolution agreed to. Nor, it seems, were the Lebanese consulted at all during the process. The resolution, in fact, seems to satisfy the French and Americans - but no one else, and so angered Arab diplomats that Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, denounced it publicly, while privately calling the resolution "a surrender document".
A spokesman for Hezbollah in Beirut was even blunter, saying that the resolution was "dead on arrival". He added, "The French caved in to American and Israeli pressure. Israel gets to stay on our land. We are required to disarm. Why isn't an international force deployed in northern Israel? Our arms get cut off and the US gets to fly cluster munitions into Ben Gurion [Airport in Tel Aviv]. Just who do they think is winning this war?"
For now, Condoleezza Rice is hailing the US-French draft as a symbol for US-European cooperation. But for many European diplomats, agreement on the draft resolution has only papered over a deepening rift between the United States and its European partners, with some European diplomats muttering that America's real goal is to induce the Europeans to wade into Lebanon on the side of a defanged and humiliated Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "bragged that Israel would destroy Hezbollah", a French diplomat said in Washington, "and if he can't do it that's his problem. I don't care what the secretary of state says, we're not going to do it for him."
There are more difficult days ahead - particularly when the US and France square off in the coming week over the draft of a second resolution. With nearly everyone now wondering whether the US position in the Middle East is unraveling, one UN diplomat said the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict may spell the end of an era in which the US and Europe established a tradition of diplomatic cooperation: "We might as well face up to it. Sooner or later the United States is going to have to choose what is more important - its strategic alliance with Europe, or its friendship with Israel."
No matter what the answer to that question might be, the very fact that it has been asked means that the real loser in the current Middle East conflict is the Atlantic alliance.
Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke are co-directors of the Conflicts Forum, based in Beirut, London and Washington, DC. They are the authors of the Asia Times Online series How to lose the 'war on terror'. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
