| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 4:43 pm Post subject: |
| October 30, 2006
Beyond Ideology
http://www.antiwar.com/justin
by Justin Raimondo
(The following is the text of a talk given at Duke University before a joint meeting sponsored by the Libertarian Party of North Carolina and the Green Party.)
The theme of this forum, "Beyond Ideology," is very appropriate to our present situation, because it is absolutely necessary that we put aside ideology for just a moment and confront the emergency that we all face.
"Emergency?" you ask. "What emergency?"
The war in Iraq is now reaching the point where the administration faces a choice: Bush must either escalate or get out. I'd be willing to bet the farm that he'll choose has already chosen the former.
What we have to understand is that the Iraq war is really the first phase of a regional war: the so-called "liberation" of Iraq, after all, was meant by the administration to spark liberal revolutions throughout the Middle East, and this hope or expectation has not diminished, even in spite of the disaster now unfolding in Baghdad. Indeed, their whole outlook is bound to "explain" the failure of their policies so far in terms of the limitations imposed on them. There is a whole school of thought, that extends from neoconservative Republicans to supposedly antiwar Democrats, which blames the failure of the occupation to contain the insurgency on the need for more troops. We didn't start out with enough troops, say these critics, and the Bush administration has "mismanaged" the war. The so-called "national security Democrats" have their own plan to "win" the war with only a minority calling for withdrawing our troops. And even these folks maintain that we will have to maintain a watchful presence elsewhere in the Middle East, in the Gulf emirates perhaps, or bases in East Africa.
We didn't just invade Iraq we invaded the Middle East, and the war that has engulfed Saddam Hussein's former dominion cannot be contained within its borders. War doesn't respect national boundaries, and tends inevitably to spill over such artificial barriers and spread like wildfire. And that wildfire will eventually consume the entire region unless we act to stop the next war before it starts.
While the antiwar movement is protesting against the war in Iraq, the War Party is already well into the planning of the next war. Their target is Iran, and their method is remarkably similar to the scenario played out in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. First we have the issue of "weapons of mass destruction," specifically nukes, which Tehran is said to be developing in defiance of the international community and Iran's treaty obligations.
Yet there is no solid intelligence that points to this: the CIA is telling us that it will be at least a decade before the Iranians have the capacity to develop a usable nuclear weapon, and the Iranians themselves tell us that they have no intention of building such a weapon. On the other hand, we have dubious exile groups, like the National Council of Resistance, that are being used just as Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was used, to funnel dubious "intelligence" to the White House, Congress, and the media. A so-called "Iranian directorate" has been set up in the Pentagon, run by the same folks who brought us the Office of Special Plans, the kitchen where so many of Judith Miller's "scoops" about the advanced state of Saddam's WMD were concocted.
Get ready for phase two of the Middle Eastern wars.
The campaign against Iran is proceeding, on the political and diplomatic front, with a full-scale demonization campaign, the chief demon being President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is the new Hitler, we are told, a man who denies the Holocaust, plots the destruction of Israel, and sits at the center of an international terrorist web, a spider waiting to strike the U.S. Lebanon's Hezbollah, according to the neocons' conspiracy theory, is but a cat's-paw for Tehran: Hassan Nasrallah is just a front man for Ahmadinejad, and has no independent political base or support.
This is laughable, of course, on its face: Hezbollah is the single largest and best organized party in Lebanon, operating a network of charitable and educational organizations that are firmly rooted in the country, and not just among the Shi'ite Muslims. There are many Christians and Druze who belong to and benefit from Hezbollah's organization, and this idea that they are a purely sectarian organization, and, as such, part of an international terrorist conspiracy, is just plain wrong: they aren't sectarians, they're nationalists. Their concerns are limited to Lebanon, and their enemy is Israel, not the U.S.
So, too, the Iraqi insurgency is not an adjunct of al-Qaeda, but a nationalistic response to the occupation. Resistance to the Americans and their British allies is the one factor that unites all factions whether Shi'ite or Sunni. If anything unites Iraq, it will be that. The insurgency will last as long as the occupation, and nothing short of complete American withdrawal will end it. The United States, however, has no intention of leaving Iraq, in spite of hints that the Bush administration is considering its options. I wouldn't count on Jim Baker to engineer a "soft landing" for the U.S. in Iraq there is no such option.
It is a mistake to look at Iraq in isolation, because then the invasion doesn't make any sense. Why did we go to war with Iraq? This question vexes the war's critics, because they aren't looking at the War Party's plans for the entire region. Their goal is to "transform" the Middle East, to change the political culture of the region from above, so to speak: that is, at gunpoint. If, somehow, the countries of the Middle East were turned, overnight, into democracies, they would become in theory less aggressive, since democracies are supposedly inherently peaceful.
And yet the two model democracies of the West, Britain and the U.S., hardly conform to this rule. The British carved out a vast empire, and did not always employ sweet reason in attaining it: we inherited the imperial mantle, and are sinking slowly under the sheer weight of it.
The great irony of our war of "liberation" is that the longer and harder we wage it, the less free we become: the more we insist on "exporting" democracy to foreign lands, the less democratic we become. The reason is because war is the health of the State, as Randolph Bourne put it: war increases and centralizes State power, strengthening it and imposing a social and political conformity that armed struggle requires. American society, in short, is becoming rapidly militarized, so that all social factors the economy, the political landscape, the life of the nation itself are mobilized to a single end.
We have seen the effects of George W. Bush's perpetual "war on terrorism" since 2001, we have witnessed a wholesale assault on our civil liberties, including the repeal of habeas corpus and the rise of the surveillance state. The president's role as commander in chief has subsumed his civilian identity and functions, and under this rubric he claims, literally, the right of life and death, judge, jury and executioner, over citizens and non-citizens alike. He has become, in short, little more than a dictator, and Congress, routinely supine in times of war, has let him get away with it. And all in the name of a war that is supposed to protect and defend America from totalitarians. This paradox, which has been widely noted, is slowly dawning on many conservatives, as well as liberals.
War generates authoritarianism and it also generates more wars. The present war doesn't exist in isolation from the rest of reality: it cannot be conveniently compartmentalized so that we can live a normal life, that is, the life of a free people, while it rages. The longer it goes on, the more it eats away at the very foundations of our republic: the moral, political, and economic pillars that hold up the roof of the social order. And keep in mind that this war is supposed to last for at least a generation, if not longer, according to our leaders. That's more than long enough to fatally undermine the values that make life in America worth living.
The War Party in America operates at a great advantage over the antiwar movement: to begin with, they are in power and, I might add, barring some entirely unforeseen upsurge of rebellion, they will stay in power no matter which major party controls the White House and Congress. This means they have the initiative and they have the tremendous resources of the U.S. government at their disposal.
Secondly, the War Party dominates the elites, not only in the government but also in the media and academia. While the average Joe and Jane might favor a foreign policy in which the U.S. minds its own business and doesn't go around the world deciding which countries need "regime change" and maybe complete demolition and which deserve a pat on the head and a pot of gold, the elites long ago decided that such a policy would amount to a dreadful "isolationism," and that "everybody knows" we must be "involved" in the world. That this "involvement" cannot consist merely of peaceful interactions, like commercial transactions and cultural exchanges, is a foregone conclusion.
Because they dominate the elites, the War Party also dominates the two major political parties. It may be that the people oppose the war plans of this administration, or any other, but there is a way to get around that: the people can't vote for peace if it isn't on the ballot. Of course, I don't need to remind you, here in North Carolina, how difficult it is for a so-called third party to get ballot status this state presents third-party activists with a unique challenge. As an example of the stranglehold the interventionists have on the political process, I would point out that, in a year when the Iraq war is the major issue in races all across the country and when opposition to the war is at an all-time high, representing nearly 60 percent of voters the Democrats' congressional campaign, led by Rahm Emanuel, opposed antiwar candidates with a slate of their own pro-war candidates in the Democratic primaries. In many instances, the Democratic candidate is more pro-war than the Republican.
These arrows in the War Party's quiver are all quite valuable in ensuring that the foreign policy "consensus" remains static in spite of radical shifts in public opinion on the subject. Yet there is one factor that gives them an incalculable advantage, and that is the weakness of their opposition. The Peace Party for lack of a better designation is divided, without comparable resources, and lacks the dedicated constituency of its adversary.
The basic division, into "Left" and "Right," is particularly acute this time around. Back in the Vietnam era, we didn't have too many conservatives who opposed the war aside from a few libertarians here and there, the antiwar movement of the 1960s was pretty exclusively a left-wing phenomenon. This time, however, there is a significant and growing contingent of antiwar conservatives, exemplified by the editors of The American Conservative magazine, including Patrick J. Buchanan, who have been savagely critical of this war and have come to question the entire rationale for our foreign policy of global intervention.
Yet, to listen to many on the Left, you'd never know that many on the Right are coming to see the error of interventionism: there is no acknowledgment that the antiwar movement is broader than the political space between Noam Chomsky and Katrina vanden Heuvel. In making this point, I speak from personal experience: as the editorial director of Antiwar.com and a committed libertarian, I've watched with dismay as tiny left-wing antiwar groups with nowhere near our audience of 100,000 readers daily dominate the planning and platform of major antiwar events. The left-wing antiwar coalitions have never asked a member of the Antiwar.com staff to address or even help promote one of their events. The reason: we're libertarians, and, as such, are outside their universe of politically acceptable alternatives.
The weakness of the antiwar movement is never more apparent when it comes to the issue of Iran: here, after all, is a case where the War Party is clearly planning to make a major move. The propaganda campaign we are hearing is strikingly similar to that which preceded the invasion of Iraq. The same scenario is being laid out: an ostensibly repressive regime, more "weapons of mass destruction," Israeli calls for action, and a powerful array of establishment figures in both major parties calling for some sort of military action. The great advantage of the War Party is that these guys plan well in advance, while the Peace Party merely reacts. There is every indication that efforts to influence this administration to make a military strike at Tehran preceded the invasion of Iraq.
What's more, the supposed allies of the antiwar movement in the Democratic Party are considerably more aggressive when it comes to Iran than even the Bush administration. Hillary Clinton the party's leading presidential candidate has denounced what she calls "appeasement" of Tehran by the U.S., and has added her full-throated voice to demands from the neoconservatives that Bush get serious about stopping Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. The Democrats' critique of the Bushian foreign policy is limited to means, not ends. The problem, though, is that it is the goals and assumptions of that policy that must be challenged, not the details.
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Subject: Commentary: Iraq exit strategy
Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Mess
Commentary: Iraq exit strategy
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, named after part-time diplomatic illusionists James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, doesn't have an Iraq exit rabbit to pull out of the hat. ISG's volunteer helpers have been told mum's the word until the American people have spoken Nov. 7. But some are speaking out, albeit anonymously. They feel precious time is being wasted at a time when each day counts for the inevitable shift in strategy.
One of the senior staffers with ISG are encouraging the two principals to recognize that the road to relative stability in the Middle East "rather than running from Baghdad to Jerusalem , as the Bush administration has always advertised, just might start out through Jerusalem and from there wind its way eastward to Baghdad ." Middle Eastern hands pooh-pooh the notion that "victory" in Iraq would somehow facilitate an equally triumphant solution in Palestine .
Other ISG staffers are suggesting the United States should subsume the Iraq problem within a larger set of regional issues and treat the stabilization of Iraq as only one part of a new grand strategy for the Middle East as a whole. This, they say, should be done by enlisting the interest and support of some parties in the region who are enjoying the spectacle of American disgrace and humiliation -- e.g., Iran , Syria and Palestine .
Short of such bold initiatives, the group of restless ISG sherpas believe the United States is headed straight toward a train wreck that "will hurt many more governments and individuals than just the United States and the poor Iraqi people."
The starting point for these restless dissenters is the Arab peace initiative, originally proposed by Saudi Arabia 's King Abdullah in March 2002, to which 22 Arab states, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq , subscribed. They offered full diplomatic recognition of Israel and normal economic relations in return for the pre-1967 war border and a full-fledged Palestinian state in the West Bank .
Israel was not interested in March 2002 and President Bush ignored the Arab overture -- and an unprecedented chance for peace. Today Israel is even less inclined to make the kind of concessions that might facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state. In fact, Palestine became a failed state before it became a state. And now all-out Palestinian civil war in Gaza -- Hamas versus Fatah -- is bubbling just below the surface. In the past month, Israeli troops have found 14 tunnels used by the two sides (and Islamic Jihad) to smuggle weapons in from Egypt .
In Israel , Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has broadened his coalition to the far right to include the Israel Beitenu Party, headed by Knesset member Avigdor Lieberman. The newcomer's platform calls for the de facto expulsion of Israel 's Arab citizens. Lieberman would do this by redrawing Israel 's frontiers along the West Bank to leave Arab Israelis and their areas outside the country.
Last May, Lieberman, now the incoming minister for strategic affairs, called for the execution of Israeli Arab Knesset members who met with Hamas leaders. In the Knesset, Lieberman said, "At the end of the Second World War, not only criminals were executed at the Nuremberg Trials, but also those who collaborated with them. I hope that this will be the fate of the collaborators in this house."
In 2001, Lieberman told ambassadors from the former Soviet republics that if relations with Egypt continued heading south, Israel should bomb Egypt 's Aswan Dam, a move that would cause a national disaster. Israel 's Ha'aretz described Lieberman as a "strategic threat" to the Jewish state.
The prospect of a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future looked even dimmer with the creation of a newly-formed Evangelical Christian organization in the United States which aims to include all pro-Israel Christians, and, according to its founder, will soon make it the single most powerful Christian organization in America . "We are a one-issue organization -- and the issue is Israel , Israel and then Israel ," Pastor John Hagee told the Jerusalem Post from his headquarters in San Antonio , Texas . Hagee, 66, is president and CEO of Global Evangelical Television, which is broadcast to over 90 million homes in the United States .
The group's main focus, according to Ha'aretz, is to lobby the U.S. government on Israel-related issues. Its leaders are planning a weekly tele-conference among senior church leaders about Israel-related events happening in Washington, as well as an annual summer meeting of thousands of Christian leaders in Washington with U.S. legislators.
Dubbed the "Christian AIPAC," after the powerful American Jewish lobby for Israel , the newly-created Evangelical Christian group interfaces with the Knesset's "Christian Allies Caucus," according to the Jerusalem Post. A Pew Foundation poll shows 53 percent of Americans believe God gave Israel to the Jews. Fifty-nine percent, according to a CNN/TIME survey, agree paradise for Christians can only be achieved once Jews are in control of the Holy Land (which includes Palestine ).
Those advising the Baker-Hamilton ISG to find the exit from Iraq by persuading President Bush to force-feed Israel a Palestinian state, should think again. Or be willing to wait a few years. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahocracy do not have a monopoly on the conviction that Allah/God has decreed a clash of civilizations. Peace between Israel and a "viable and contiguous" Palestinian state is not part of the celestial narrative on either side. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2006 9:38 am Post subject: |
| November 3, 2006
The Neocons, Undaunted
They're looking to make a comeback after the elections
by Justin Raimondo
You have to give the neoconservatives credit for tenacity. Any other political or ideological group saddled with their record would crawl off into the shadows to expire without fanfare. Not the neocons. Vampire-like, they rise from the crypt of Bush's "global democratic revolution," fangs extended and hungry for fresh blood. There isn't enough garlic in the world to deter them I doubt that even a pointed stake in the heart would suffice. The War Party, it seems, is immortal like evil itself.
They told us the Iraqis would greet their American "liberators" with showers of rose petals; instead, U.S. troops are caught in a hail of bullets. They said Saddam Hussein was harboring "weapons of mass destruction," including an advanced nuclear weapons program, that posed a deadly threat to America; the closest they could come, once we'd invaded and combed the country for many months, was a storehouse of some very old mustard gas the bad guys' WMD of choice, circa 1917. They proclaimed that the invasion of Iraq would lead to democratic revolutions throughout the region; what we got was Hamas, Hezbollah, and a flood of recruits to al-Qaeda's bloody banner. They assured us it would be a "cakewalk"; it turned into a death march.
Instead of changing their names and getting as far from the crime scene as possible, the neocons or, at least, some of them are not only lingering, they're openly proclaiming their intention to visit fresh disasters on us. The most explicit such statement comes from Joshua Muravchik, a former leader of the Young Peoples Socialist League who now inhabits the heady heights of that neocon Olympus over at the American Enterprise Institute. Muravchik, author of Exporting Democracy, a pre-9/11 polemic in which he outlined what was to become the Bushian policy of "global democratic revolution," is as pure a neocon as exists outside of Michael Ledeen's study. Undaunted by the massive failure of the democratist crusade, he writes in Foreign Policy magazine of "Operation Comeback," in the form of a memo to his partners in crime. The subject line is: "How to Save the Neocons." Which raises the question: save them from what public obloquy? The penitentiary? A lynching?
I'd settle for two out of three, and much of the rest of the country is behind me, yet Muravchik finds this rising anti-neocon sentiment baffling, even "startling." Oddly, he has not been startled into anything like repentance, or even caution: instead, even as he describes he and his fellow cultists as "proven losers at Washington's power game," Muravchik boasts "our ideas have influenced the policies of President Bush" and avers "that does feel good." I'll bet. As I have pointed out before, the most powerful man in the world is the world's biggest, most fanatical neocon, and that is the ultimate prize in Washington's power game, now isn't it?
He also crows that "a number of young people and older converts are swelling our ranks," yet he later complains that the ranks are being decimated by defectors. Which is it? Oh, but no matter, mere numbers are irrelevant, because the neocons have always been motivated or, rather, inspired by the sense that capital-H history is on their side. Stepping over the corpses, they confidently proclaim their next conquest, sights fixed firmly on Iran.
Before they can get to that, however, it is necessary to deal with the blowback from their "success" in reducing Iraq to rubble and murdering 650,000 of the "liberated" in cold blood:
"The price of this success is that we are subjected to relentless obloquy. 'Neocon' is now widely synonymous with 'ultraconservative' or, for some, 'dirty Jew.' A young Egyptian once said to me, '"Neoconservative" sounds to our ears like "terrorist" sounds to yours.'"
The relentlessness of this obloquy has nothing to do with "ultraconservatism," since the real ultraconservatives have always hated the neocons, and with good reason: there is nothing in the least bit "conservative" about their doctrine of perpetual war and their towering hubris, unmitigated in spite of the massive rebuke the neocons have suffered.
As for the anti-Semitic epithets he throws into the mix, one can only note that, next to the marginal David Duke, Muravchik is the loudest proponent of the neocon = Jew equation. It doesn't matter to him that some of themostprominentopponents of the neocons are themselves Jewish, nor does it matter that the quotation marks around the above epithet are unsourced. Muravchik knows perfectly well that the neocons' chief critics are not to be found in Egypt, but in the good old U.S. of A.
As for those defectors:
"I am shocked to hear that some among us, wearying of these attacks, are sidling away from the neocon label. Where is the joie de combat? The essential tenets of neoconservatism belief that world peace is indivisible, that ideas are powerful, that freedom and democracy are universally valid, and that evil exists and must be confronted are as valid today as when we first began. That is why we must continue to fight. But we need to sharpen our game."
For someone who holds as an "essential" tenet "that ideas are powerful" to disdain second thoughts about the efficacy of those ideas is passing strange unless one's ideas are held as dogma. Attributing defections to weariness, rather than an honest reevaluation in light of new evidence such as that voiced by former neocon philosopher Francis Fukuyama is indicative of the neocons' peculiar blindness. And who would've guessed, with all their warmongering and lists of countries that ought to be invaded forthwith, that neocons are advocates of "world peace" and its "indivisibility"?!
All of this is easily dismissed as the apologetics of an ordinary thug standing in the dock attributing his career as a champion carjacker to high idealism, flawed only in its execution. The criminal assures the judge that he and his kind will "learn from our mistakes," as Muravchik writes, confessing that
"We are guilty of poorly explaining neoconservatism. How, for example, did the canard spread that the roots of neoconservative foreign policy can be traced back to Leo Strauss and Leon Trotsky? The first of these false connections was cooked up by Lyndon LaRouche, the same convicted scam artist who spends his days alerting humanity to the Zionist-Henry Kissinger-Queen Elizabeth conspiracy. The second probably originated with insufficiently reconstructed Stalinists."
If neoconservatism has been poorly explained, then it hasn't been for lack of opportunities and a public platform. The neocons have been agitating for a war in the Middle East for over a decade, and they have had at their disposal more than ample space in the mainstream media, as well as their own wholly-owned-and-operated press, including the Murdoch conglomerate, Lord Black's now-fallen media empire, and National Review, not to mention the impressive array of books penned by neoconservative authors, who never seem to lack for publishers and fat grants from bigfoundations that cater to their cadre.
As for the "canard" that Trotsky and Strauss are indeed avatars of neoconservatism, Matt Yglesias has a good retort here. One can only wonder how Muravchik expects us to ignore the public record including the memoirs of such neocon worthies as Irving Kristol and accept his contention that the neocons were born, like Venus, from the foam of the sea. The irony is that Muravchik is himself the exemplar of the neocons' Trotskyist roots, having served as youth leader of the Shachtmanite "third camp" Social Democrats, USA, the Young Peoples Socialist League, otherwise known as the "Yipsels." Lyndon LaRouche has nothing to do with it: plenty of mainstream commentators have traced the neoconservatives' ideological genealogy back to the founder of the Red Army.
If Muravchik is not exactly loyal to his neo-Trotskyist past, his present allegiances are a bit more solid. Unlike Richard Perle, who now despises George W. Bush for supposedly abandoning the War Party, Muravchik argues that the neocons should stick by the president. Bush is, after all, a politician, and, by the way,
"The administration made its share of mistakes, and so did we. We were glib about how Iraqis would greet liberation. Did we fail to appreciate sufficiently the depth of Arab bitterness over colonial memories? Did we underestimate the human and societal damage wreaked by decades of totalitarian rule in Iraq? Could things have unfolded differently had our occupation force been large enough to provide security?"
They weren't just "glib" they were dead wrong about "how Iraqis would greet liberation." Too many were "liberated" from their very lives. This never occurs to comrade Muravchik, who instead attributes the liberators' failure to over-dependence on high-tech weaponry, not enough troops, and not enough money spent on the military.
Yet it was the very smallness of the invasion force that was one of the major selling points of the war. Those who suggested that half a million troops were required for the occupation of Iraq were attacked as "defeatists," and sidelined, as Gen. Eric Shinseki, former Army chief of staff, discovered when he was publicly attacked by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. And, of course, the American people would never have gone along with sending that many troops to Iraq which is precisely why the number was kept low.
The neocons, however, are not really interested in Iraq any longer: that, after all, was yesterday. But tomorrow belongs to them, as a very similar political movement once put it. Iraq is in ruins, the credibility of the U.S. as a force for good in the world is at an all-time low, and the body bags are coming home at an increasing pace yet Muravchik, willfully blind to all this, is recommending that we:
"Prepare to Bomb Iran. Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office. It is all but inconceivable that Iran will accept any peaceful inducements to abandon its drive for the bomb. Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power status for a mess of pottage. Even if things in Iraq get better, a nuclear-armed Iran will negate any progress there. Nothing will embolden terrorists and jihadists more than a nuclear-armed Iran."
By all means, let's attack another Middle Eastern country after all, it worked so well the last time.
Speaking of "religio-ideological fanatics," only such a one would dare propose attacking Iran in the present context. Not content with plunging Iraq into a hellish nightmare, Muravchik and his confreres would start a regional war with global consequences including the threat of renewed terrorism against the United States. Notice, too, the odd phraseology: Bush "will need to bomb" this is said in spite of the CIA's assessment that Iran will not have a nuclear capacity for a good 10 years. What, then, is the big hurry? It's a high principle of neoconservatism that it's never too early to start the bombing.
Muravchik's other suggestion: the Republicans should "recruit Joe Lieberman in 2008," running, no doubt, on a platform of Nuke Tehran! That should go over big with the American public not! To say nothing of the reaction inside the network of "freedom-loving" "pro-American" "rebels" he suggests we set up abroad. To revive the stalled neocon "revolution," he wants increased aid to Muslim moderates, via the National Endowment for Democracy, and a Cold War-style propaganda apparatus, with sufficient resources to plot regime change on a political basis.
Like the Marxists, who complain that communism didn't fail because it was never really tried, the neocons are full of excuses for the embarrassing implosion of their ideological hopes and dreams.
The Iranian contingent of Muravchik's Democratic Internationale will doubtless be thrilled to learn that their country is targeted for pulverization. That should inspire them, all right as long as they're getting subsidies from Muravchik's proposed version of the Congress of Cultural Freedom (a Cold War front group of intellectuals funded by the CIA) and are safely ensconced in Washington.
You can't make this stuff up. The delusions piled on hallucinations are psychedelic in their effect, causing a uniquely dangerous collective craziness. Dangerous because the madness that infects large portions of Washington, D.C., also possesses our chief executive, never all that psychologically stable to begin with. Muravchik's evaluation of what President Bush will "need" to do to Iran is shared by many. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the bombs starting falling the day after the election or, as rumored, sometime in January.
The Israelis are reportedly blackmailing us into a strike by declaring that they'll do it if we don't. And that's what this is all about. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are quite correct in noting that Israel's American lobby is in the forefront of the "let's bomb Iran" contingent, just as they were in the case of Iraq, and Muravchik's analysis perfectly reflects the Israeli perspective. His contention that Iran will "dominate" the Middle East leaves out one important fact: Israel already has nukes, at least 400. An Iranian nuke would end Israeli dominance and strike a balance of power in the region. By eliding this strategic reality and the fact that Israel is somehow exempted from "the global nonproliferation regime" Muravchik supposedly seeks to uphold Israel's amen corner in the U.S. hopes to scare us into war.
However, the polls show that it isn't selling, and the neocons know it. That's why Muravchik is giving them this little pep talk and strategizing a "comeback" for a thoroughly discredited and justly vilified movement.
It won't work. Muravchik is right that "the global thunder against Bush when he pulls the trigger will be deafening." The storm will likely include a good deal of lightning strikes, in which Muravchik, the neocons, and the legacy of Bush II all go up in a puff of foul-smelling smoke. If so, it will almost be worth it.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9959
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2006 9:39 am Post subject: Evil Is As Evil Does |
| Evil Is As Evil Does
by Paul Craig Roberts
DIGG THIS
Compared to the current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Irans former president Muhammad Khatami is regarded in Western foreign affairs circles as a moderate. When Khatami visited the US in September, he called on the US and Iran to stop verbally assaulting each other in the interest of dialogue that could build trust and eliminate the frictions between the two countries. Khatami said that the precondition for dialogue was "to eliminate the language of threat."
In an attempt to "resolve conflicts by talking, rather than by aggression," the venerable Scottish University of St. Andrews invited Khatami to the United Kingdom for an honorary degree, followed by a speech at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. However, a spanner was thrown into the works by two Iranian exiles, who claim to have been unlawfully imprisoned and tortured in Iran during the period of Khatamis presidency. Under Section 134 of Britains Criminal Justice Act of 1988, torture wherever committed in the world is criminal under British law and triable in the UK. Thus, Khatami might still be arrested as he tours the UK in the interest of opening communication.
If Khatami can be arrested in the UK for torture, how does British Prime Minister Tony Blair escape arrest for the torture of Afghans and Iraqis by coalition forces? Why are not US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Richard Cheney, and President George W. Bush arrested when they visit the UK?
Does the British law excuse Anglo-Americans from its reach? Does it exclude government officials while they are in office and pursue them only when they have become private citizens?
Or are we witnessing the operation of the neoconservative assumption that there is one rule of law for the US and its allies and another rule for countries that do not support the neocon agenda? Neocons maintain that whatever the US and its allies or puppets do in the interest of US hegemony is defensible and permissible but is a crime if any other country does it.
When the president and vice president of the United States publicly defend and advocate torture and ram torture legislation through the US Congress, it is hypocrisy for the US to condemn others for torture.
Perhaps Americans dont notice, but the rest of the world does see the double standard applied when Saddam Hussein is put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, while US, UK, and Israeli government officials commit far greater crimes by illegally invading countries, targeting civilian populations, and torturing detainees.
Considering the enormous bloodshed and destruction of civilian lives and infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq by US and UK troops, why do British left-wing academics and human rights activists want to help the neoconservatives in the US and UK spread the war to Iran? Helping to spread war is what the British left is doing when they agitate for the arrest of Khatami while leaving Labour Party PM Tony Blair free to commit more crimes against humanity. Could it be that the two Iranian exiles are acting as neoconservative agents to block any possible rapprochement with Iran? This is not a wild speculation in view of the role Iraqi exiles played in deceiving the American public and making false accusations against Iraq that Bush used to justify his invasion.
The Iraq and Afghanistan invasions have turned out to be a catastrophe for the US and UK as well as for the Iraqis and Afghans. Only a totally deranged political leadership would want to spread the catastrophe to Iran.
According to a BBC news report (October 30), British private security firm personnel mercenaries to some outnumber British soldiers in Iraq six to one. A British charity group accuses PM Tony Blair of "allowing mercenary armies to operate completely outside the law." In Britain it is no longer permissible to hunt foxes, because it is "cruel and inhumane," but it is perfectly alright for private mercenaries and British soldiers to murder Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children for the sake of Anglo-American-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
Saddam Hussein was overthrown and indicted, and Iraq largely destroyed, in part because Saddam is "an evil man who tortured political opponents." Evidence of US torture of Iraqis is all over the Internet in vivid photos. According to Amnesty International, "Adequate safeguards against torture and ill-treatment are not in place in Multinational Force detention facilities, and thousands continue to be held without charge or trial." The president and vice president of the US advocate torture not only of Iraqis but also of everyone declared, correctly or incorrectly, by some US government official to be a "terrorist suspect."
Why are not Bush, Cheney and Blair on trial? Their crimes dwarf any that could possibly be attributed to Khatami.
The only possible answer is that "might makes right." Yet, Bush, Cheney and Blair parade around draping themselves in moral justifications for their inhumane deeds and despicable acts.
The fact that Americans tolerate crimes against humanity by their own leaders is evidence that Americans are exceptional only in their hubris.
November 3, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail] wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholar journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Copyright © 2006 Creators Syndicate
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts179.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 8:17 pm Post subject: Russia says won't back draft text on Iran sanctions |
| Four articles to remind us that it's not a good idea to threaten or
frighten a bear with thousands of nukes pointed our way...
_________
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061101/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc_2
Russia says won't back draft text on Iran sanctions
By Dmitry Solovyov
Wed Nov 1, 2:46 PM ET
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on
Wednesday Moscow would not support a draft U.N. sanctions resolution on
Iran proposed by European states, Russian news agencies reported.
Lavrov's comments, the bluntest so far from Russia regarding the
proposed text, underscored the difficulties major world powers are
experiencing as they try to agree on a response to Iran's defiance of
U.N. calls to scale back its atomic work.
Iran, which says its nuclear intentions are peaceful, has vowed not to
be cowed by the threat of U.N. action. A senior official warned on
Wednesday Tehran may further scale back co-operation with U.N.
inspectors if any sanctions are imposed.
The draft resolution drawn up for U.N. Security Council
discussion by European states would outlaw most nuclear and missile
cooperation with Iran and impose a travel ban on people responsible for
and involved in its nuclear program.
"We cannot support those measures which in fact aim to isolate Iran from
the outside world, including the isolation of the people who are charged
with leading negotiations on the nuclear program," news agencies quoted
Lavrov as saying.
The resolution was drafted after Iran rejected repeated U.N. demands to
scrap uranium enrichment, which can be used to make material for power
stations or warheads.
Washington had hoped to toughen up the resolution, with a senior U.S.
official on Tuesday describing it as a more serious security threat than
North Korea.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he was optimistic Russia
would support a U.N. sanctions resolution.
"While there are still negotiations that will need to be had concerning
the contents of the resolution, the process is moving forward and we
hope that it will move forward with some speed," he said.
UNDERSTANDABLE
Asked specifically about Lavrov's comments that Moscow would not support
the current draft resolution, he said: "All that means to me is that
they have some changes to the draft on the table. Certainly that is
understandable."
Lavrov said Russia, one of five permanent U.N. Security Council members
with veto powers, was "firmly determined" to help establish a dialogue
with Iran on its nuclear program.
"We are working on the text of a resolution on Iran and we will try to
focus it on the issues highlighted in the report by the head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," Lavrov said.
Lavrov said the issues that had yet to be clarified included "first and
foremost, the uranium enrichment program, chemical processing and a
heavy-water reactor." "These are the issues we will concentrate on," he
said.
In Tehran, Hassan Rohani, a moderate politician who led Iran's nuclear
negotiations until President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office last year,
warned on Wednesday of consequences if the European text was approved.
"Iran will give a proper answer if they pass such a tough and bad
resolution," the students news agency ISNA quoted Rohani as saying.
"One of the possible answers could be limiting our cooperation with the
IAEA," said Rohani, a representative of Iran's most powerful figure,
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the Supreme National Security
Council.
Iran ended short-notice checks by IAEA inspectors in February after its
case was sent back to the Security Council.
(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran and Sue Pleming in
Washington)
++++++++++++++++
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20061101%5cACQRTT20061101\
1103RTTRADERUSEQUITY_1003.htm&
Russia Defends Supply Of Missiles To Iran
(RTTNews) - Russia on Wednesday defended its agreement to supply air
defense missiles to Iran. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in
an interview with Russia Today television on Wednesday that the air
defense missiles Russia had agreed to supply to Iran last December are
purely defensive weapons with a limited range. He stressed that the
missiles were purely defensive and added that they cannot be used in
offensive operations. He said that the missiles that are to be supplied
by Russia have a very limited range and could be used to defend only "a
small part of the Iranian territory." Earlier, Russia had rejected the
Western demand to cancel its $700 million contract to sell 29 Tor-M1 air
defense missile systems to Iran as per an agreement signed last
December.
+++++++
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=7656\
6
Iran to mimic US-led naval war games in Gulf
Analysts perceive move as thinly veiled threat in case of sanctions
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Iran's Revolutionary Guards will start 10 days of war games Thursday
that will include drills in the Gulf and the Sea of Oman, Iranian state
television reported on Wednesday, days after US-led naval exercises in
the area. The United States-led naval maneuvers involving 25 nations in
the Gulf on Monday aimed at training forces to block the transport of
weapons of mass destruction and related equipment, officials said.
Yehya Rahim Safavi, commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, said
ground, air and naval forces, including submarines, would stage
exercises called "The Greatest Prophet" from Thursday until November 11,
state television reported.
He said the maneuvers would be "mainly in the Persian Gulf and the Sea
of Oman," adding that members of the volunteer Basij militia, who see
themselves as the guardians of revolutionary values, would also take
part in the war games.
Safavi said the elite Guards units would show off a wide range of
Iranian-made hardware, including missiles and rockets with various
ranges.
"Our air force [will participate] by firing dozens of missiles including
Shahab-2 and Shahab-3 missiles with cluster warheads," Safavi added.
Military experts say Iran's Shahab-3 missiles have a maximum range of
some 2,000 kilometers, making them capable of hitting Israel as well as
US military bases in the Gulf.
The Revolutionary Guards, the ideologically driven wing of the armed
forces which has a separate command structure from the regular military,
held war games in the Gulf in April in which they tested new missiles,
torpedoes and other equipment.
Analysts viewed the war games as a thinly veiled threat that Iran could
disrupt vital oil shipping lanes if pushed by an escalation in the
nuclear dispute.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Safavi stressed the drills were not a threat to neighboring countries,
saying: "Our neighbors are our friends. The Guards just want to prove
that they are ready to resist in any threatening situation.''
Iran regularly holds large maneuvers, often using them to test weapons
developed by its domestic arms industry.
On Monday, Italy, the US, Australia, Britain, France and Bahrain
deployed ships and personnel to the drill, part of the US Proliferation
Security Initiative (PSI). Other countries, including the United Arab
Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan and South Korea, sent observers.
Named "Leading Edge," the drill was the first such exercise to take
place in the Gulf, and Bahrain was the only Gulf Arab state to take an
active role.
The Bahraini, Qatari and UAE involvement in the US initiative flies
against Iran's call on Sunday for regional security to be maintained by
countries in the region.
Several Middle Eastern countries have endorsed the US Proliferation
Security Initiative principles this year after visits by US officials to
the region were stepped up, a State Department official who declined to
be identified said.
Leading Edge was the 25th PSI exercise since US President George W. Bush
launched the initiative in 2003. Eighty countries have endorsed PSI
principles.
Some countries took part in planning the operation, whereby various
intelligence agencies worked on a scenario in which a vessel en-route to
the UAE from Europe was suspected of carrying weapons of mass
destruction.
Iran said the six-nation drills would not improve security in the Gulf
waters, through which about 20 percent of the world's oil passes. -
Reuters, AP
+++++++++++
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061031/ts_nm/nuclear_iran_russia_dc_2
Russia says believes Iran's nuke program peaceful Tue Oct 31, 1:30 PM ET
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it believed Iran's
nuclear program was peaceful, and a political dialogue, not sanctions,
must be used in talks with Tehran.
"We do not have information that would suggest that Iran is carrying out
a non-peaceful (nuclear) program," Russian Security Council Secretary
Igor Ivanov told a news conference in Moscow.
"We believe that the possibilities for continuing political discussion
around this problem (Iran's nuclear program) have not been exhausted,"
he said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Russian counterpart
Vladimir Putin in a telephone conversation on Monday that talks over
Iran's nuclear dispute were being hindered because the European side did
not have enough authority.
"The most important problem in continuing Iran and Europe's negotiations
(over the nuclear issue) is the European side's lack of enough authority
(to take decisions)," an Iranian television report quoted Ahmadinejad as
telling Putin.
In a statement on Monday, the Kremlin said Putin had told the Iranian
leader that Moscow favored further talks.
Iran says negotiations are the only way to resolve the dispute. But
Iran's failure to meet a U.N. deadline to halt enrichment has opened up
the possibility of U.N. sanctions.
European states have prepared a draft sanctions resolution but Russia
has voiced misgivings.
"Sanctions should not be adopted for their own sake," Ivanov said.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana held months of
talks with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. But those
talks did not reach a deal and Solana said this month it was up to Iran
to decide if talks should continue.
"Some Western countries create obstacles and prevent a peaceful solution
to Iran's nuclear case," Ahmadinejad said.
Iran has often blamed the United States, its arch-foe, for seeking to
sway others against Iran. Washington has been seeking to toughen the
sanctions resolution | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 12:37 am Post subject: |
| US Support for Israel PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on the World Trade Center:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/05/the-gorilla-in-the-room-is-us-support-for-israel.php
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Full-Page NY Times Ad: "Congress is in Thrall to the Israel Lobby"
November 2, 2006 (Washington, DC) - The Council for the National Interest Foundation argues in a full-page New York Times ad ( http://www.cnionline.org/nyt4.pdf ) scheduled to run this Sunday, November 5th, two days before the 2006 midterm elections, that the U.S. Congress is in thrall to the Israel lobby. The lobby's negative effects on U.S. Middle East policy, the ad argues, are demonstrated by the growing possibility that the U.S. will use its military might to curtail Iran's nuclear program, by the U.S. refusal to call for a ceasefire during the 34-day Israeli bombardment of Lebanon over the summer, and by the continuing chaos, isolation and bloodshed in the occupied Palestinian territories. The advertisement, titled "Who is Holding Peace Hostage?", will run nationwide opposite the editorial page in the "Week in Review" section of the Times. (The ad is also available as a JPEG - http://www.cnionline.org/nyt4.jpg - or as HTML - http://www.cnionline.org/pubs/ads/holding_peace_hostage.htm )
In a section titled "The Israel Lobby is Trying to Sell Another War," the ad points out that a recent Zogby International poll commissioned by the CNI Foundation found that 39 percent of American likely voters believe that "the work of the Israel lobby on Congress and the Bush administration has been a key factor for going to war in Iraq and now confronting Iran." As a solution to the present impasse over Iran's nuclear program, the ad suggests that the U.S. use its power to renegotiate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to encompass all nations, including Israel, which is not a signatory of the present NPT and has an estimated 250 to 300 nuclear weapons.
The Israel lobby, the ad says, was able to defeat a recent amendment to the defense appropriations bill introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that would ban the export of cluster bombs to countries that use such weapons in civilian areas, including Israel's use of U.S.-made cluster weapons in Lebanon. As evidence, the ad points to the amount of money that several opponents of the amendment received from pro-Israel political action committees (PACs) over their career and in the current election cycle. Total donations to Congressional candidates, Republican and Democrat, from pro-Israel PACs was more than $2.4 million in the current election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The ad concludes: "Why are [members of Congress] selling their vote and undermining peace for Israel and her neighbors?"
The ad also promotes a DVD made and distributed by the CNI Foundation that includes a recent debate organized by the London Review of Books in New York City between Prof. John Mearsheimer, Amb. Dennis Ross, and Amb. Martin Indyk, among others, as well as an appearance at the National Press Club by Profs. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of the recent academic paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." Mearsheimer and Walt are currently working on a book commissioned by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a major publisher.
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