| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 1:01 am Post subject: |
| Neocons: We expected Israel to attack Syria
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3340750,00.html
They are a unified group of American intellectuals, who held key positions in Bush administration and were blamed for getting US into Iraq. Most of them are Jews, so they are obviously accused of risking America in favor of Israel. Israeli Meyrav Wurmser claims that if situation is bad, Israelis are also to blame
Yitzhak Benhorin
Published: 12.16.06, 16:07
WASHINGTON - It hasn't been a good year for neocons, that group of conservative American intellectuals pulling some strings of US policy, particularly during the George W. Bush administration.
The strongest indictment against them is the war in Iraq, a quagmire in which the US is currently stuck up to its neck. And as Bush's days in the White House grow numbered, they are leaving one by one.
Baker-Hamilton Report
Key to Iraq: Solving Israeli-Arab conflict / Reuters
Bipartisan Iraq Study Group calls for direct talks between Israel, Syria as part of revived US commitment to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace 'on all fronts.' Report also recommends that US forces begin to withdraw from combat in Iraq, calls for new diplomatic, political push to improve 'grave and deteriorating' situation
Full story
Among the few remaining neocons is David Wurmser, an advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney on Middle Eastern affairs. Wurmser is a Middle East expert, just like his wife, Israeli Meyrav Wurmser, a researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute.
Meyrav Wurmser was also one of the co-founders of MEMRI, which tracks Arab leaders and translating their political statements from Arabic to English.
Despite the fact that many neocons are no longer part of the government, it turns out they're still one big happy family, who make sure to remain in touch.
Many are Jews, who share a love for Israel . Some of the accusations against the government regarding the war in Iraq is that it was undertaken primarily for Israel's sake and that the attack on Iraq was actually an Israeli objective.
In an interview with Ynet, Dr. Meyrav Wurmser refutes the accusations and criticism.
"Since I'm an Israeli in the gang, you wouldn't believe what's been written about me," she said. "That I'm proof of the covert neoconservative connection with Israel and the Mossad."
What are you trying to achieve?
"We believe in a strong and active American foreign policy. America is a good force in the world, a nation that believes in freedom. We believe in exporting American ideas of freedom and democracy, to promote greater stability."
Did you, in practice, bring about the war in Iraq?
"We expressed ideas, but the policy in Iraq was taken out of neocon hands very quickly. The idea was that America has a war on terror and that the only actual place for coping with it is in the Middle East and that a fundamental change would come through a change in leadership. We had to start somewhere.
"The objective was to change the face of the Middle East. But it was impossible to create a mini-democracy amidst a sea of dictatorships looking to destroy this poor democracy, and thus, where do insurgents in Iraq come from? From Iran and Syria ."
Should they have been conquered?
"No. There was a need for massive political action, of threats and pressure on these governments, financial pressure, for example. The sanctions on Syria were nothing. There was a period of time when the Syrians were afraid that they were next. It would have been possible to use this momentum in a smarter way. There's no need to go in militarily."
Everyone feels beaten after last 5 years
At their prime, the neocons held the reigns of American decision making. In the Pentagon, there were Deputy Defense Minister Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, and Harold Rhode, a senior Pentagon advisor on Islam.
In the vice president's office were Louis Libby and John Hannah. Richard Perle headed the committee advising to the Pentagon. In the White House were Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy Elliott Abrams and Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, who later became the US ambassador to the UN.
Iraq. Today it's already a disaster (Photo: AP)
According to Wurmser's description, the group is comprised of academics, most of them lacking operational experience, who became part of the Bush administration but failed to get their ideas through bureaucracy.
"These are intellectuals who came with great ideas, in which I still believe, but did not find a way to promote their beliefs in the complexities of bureaucracy," she says.
Your people held senior positions in the Pentagon. Didn’t Deputy Defense Minister Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith implement your theories?
"The final decisions were no in their hands. In the Pentagon, the decisions were in the hands of the military, and the political leadership had a lot of clashes with the military leadership."
Did the military leadership ask for more soldiers in Iraq?
"Rumsfeld prevented that. He was a failure. The State Department opposed the neocons' stances. Also John Bolton, who is also part of the family, and was no. 4 at the State Department under Colin Powell, was incapable of passing decisions…
"Powell curbed our ideas and they did not pass. There was a lot of frustration over the years in the administration because we didn’t feel we were succeeding.
"Now Bolton left (the UN – Y.B.) and there are others who are about to leave. This administration is in its twilight days. Everyone is now looking for work, looking to make money… We all feel beaten after the past five years… We miss the peace and quiet and writing books…
"When you enter the administration you have to keep your mouth shut. Now many will resume their writing… Now, from the outside, they will be able to convey all the criticism they kept inside."
In the meantime you left the US inside Iraq?
"We did not bring the US into Iraq in such a way. Our biggest war which we lost was the idea that before entering Iraq we must train an exile Iraqi government and an Iraqi military force, and hand over the rule to them immediately after the occupation and leave Iraq. That was our idea and it was not accepted."
Your man was Ahmed Chalabi, who was later suspected of spying for Iran?
"That is true, but we didn’t want him as a dictator but as a person in a government that will act democratically… We must help the current democratic government. The borders with Iran and Syria should have been blocked immediately when we entered Iraq. Now it's already a disaster."
Why didn’t you attack Syria?
Many of Wurmser's friends believe the disaster is not only in Iraq, but in the entire region. They are also very frustrated over the way in which Israel embarked on the war against Hizbullah this summer, and on the way it returned from it.
"Hizbullah defeated Israel in the war. This is the first war Israel lost," Dr. Wurmser declares.
IDF in Lebanon (Photo: Dan Bronfeld, IDF Spokesperson's Office)
Is this a popular stance in the administration, that Israel lost the war?
"Yes, there is no doubt. It's not something one can argue about it. There is a lot of anger at Israel."
What caused the anger?
"I know this will annoy many of your readers… But the anger is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. Instead of Israel fighting against Hizbullah, many parts of the American administration believe that Israel should have fought against the real enemy, which is Syria and not Hizbullah."
Did the administration expect Israel to attack Syria?
"They hoped Israel would do it. You cannot come to another country and order it to launch a war, but there was hope, and more than hope, that Israel would do the right thing. It would have served both the American and Israeli interests.
"The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space… They believed that Israel should be allowed to win. A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hizbullah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran, but the thought was that its strategic and important ally should be hit."
"It is difficult for Iran to export its Shiite revolution without joining Syria, which is the last nationalistic Arab country. If Israel had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran, that it would have weakened it and changes the strategic map in the Middle East.
"The final outcome is that Israel did not do it. It fought the wrong war and lost. Instead of a strategic war that would serve Israel's objectives, as well as the US objectives in Iraq. If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended."
Wurmser says that what most frustrates her is hearing people close to decision makers in Israel asking her if the US would have let Israel attack Syria.
"No one would have stopped you. It was an American interest. They would have applauded you. Think why you received so much time and space to operate. Rice was in the region and Israel embarrassed her with Qana, and still Israel got more time. Why aren't they reading the map correctly in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?"
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The serving Israel first fifth columnist Zionist Jew David Wurmser co-wrote the 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel document as well along with fellowing serving Israel first Jewish JINSA/PNAC Neocon traitors to America in Richard Perle and Douglas Feith:
Bamford discusses 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda on MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann'[/b]:
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
Last edited by Alpha on Tue Dec 26, 2006 12:39 pm; edited 1 time in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:55 pm Post subject: Forward: Neocons Leery of Baker’s Return |
| From: "Jeffrey Blankfort"
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:51:16 -0800
Subject: [IntelligentMinds] Forward: Neocons Leery of Baker’s Return
“It’s written into James Baker’s political and ideological DNA that the solution to any problem in the Middle East runs right through Jewish
Jerusalem,” said one prominent neoconservative, New York Post columnist John Podhoretz. “He is one of the last voices of the politics of the
Old Right, which sees Israel as a hindrance to American interests in the Middle East rather than an outpost of Western civilization amid tyranny,
kleptocracy and Islamic fundamentalism. His views should be viewed with particular skepticism by American institutions dedicated to the
preservation of the U.S.-Israel alliance.”
This is additional refutation to the outright falsehood, known at other times as "the Big Lie," perpetrated by certain progressive pundits that the first Bush
administration was solidly pro-Israel, that support for Israeli settlements has been consistent US policy and that it has been the US and not Israel, that has
led the "rejectionist" front.
http://www.forward.com/articles/ neocons-leery-of-baker-s-return/
Neocons Leery of Baker’s Return
News Analysis
E.J. Kessler | Fri. Dec 08, 2006
As official Washington waited with bated breath this week for the report of the
Iraq Study Group, neoconservatives were sounding alarms that the document boded
ill for Israel.
That was because the leader of the ISG was none other than James Addison Baker III.
By now, it’s an immutable law of American politics and foreign policy: Whenever
a Bush finds himself in big trouble, there emerges Baker, the suave inside political
operator, sage diplomatic wise man and consummate family fixer.
It’s no wonder President Bush turned to Baker. President Reagan’s last chief of
staff and an old-line Houston lawyer, Baker worked with the first President Bush
for decades and helped him out of innumerable jams. Then, too, Baker oversaw the
Republican strategy during the 2000 Florida recount, securing the younger Bush his
victory.
But Baker’s history as a diplomat makes him controversial, especially in the Jewish
community. As secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, during the first Bush administration,
Baker often clashed with Jerusalem and the top pro-Israel lobbying group, the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee.
A Texas lawyer and consultant with ties to the oil industry and to the Saudi monarchy,
Baker once said that there was “no greater obstacle to peace” than Israel’s settlements.
During 1990 congressional testimony, he recited the number of the White House switchboard,
saying that the Israelis could call it if they were interested in making peace.
In 1991, the Bush administration withheld $10 billion in loan guarantees that Israel
had requested to absorb Russian Jewish immigrants, linking them to a freeze in settlements.
Then there’s the matter of his famous alleged (and denied) private remark: “F-k
the Jews. They don’t vote for us anyway.”
“It’s written into James Baker’s political and ideological DNA that the solution
to any problem in the Middle East runs right through Jewish Jerusalem,” said one
prominent neoconservative, New York Post columnist John Podhoretz. “He is one of
the last voices of the politics of the Old Right, which sees Israel as a hindrance
to American interests in the Middle East rather than an outpost of Western civilization
amid tyranny, kleptocracy and Islamic fundamentalism. His views should be viewed
with particular skepticism by American institutions dedicated to the preservation
of the U.S.-Israel alliance.”
Baker’s well-remembered pronouncements have engendered distrust in some quarters
toward the recommendations of the study group, a bipartisan effort headed jointly
by Baker and a former Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Lee Hamilton.
Concerns were hardly assuaged by leaks suggesting that the study group would recommend
a grand international conference to ameliorate the Iraq crisis — with the participation
of regional bad actors Iran and Syria, secured with concessions from Israel. Privately,
however, the administration and its allies were downplaying any Arab-Israeli piece
as tangential to the study group’s deliberations.
American Jewish organizations, for their part, were keeping their powder dry, at
least until they could study the report, which the Baker group was presenting to
the public as the Forward went to press Wednesday.
“Most of the Jewish community will stand aside from the debate unless there’s [a
push] to have linkage of the Arab-Israel matter to the resolution of Iraq; if that’s
part of the recommendations, you will hear a response,” said the national director
of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, in the days before the report came
out.
Some Republicans defended Baker, saying that, whatever his past history, the hard-nosed
former state secretary might prove the man of the hour for Iraq.
Fred Zeidman, a top GOP and Jewish communal activist from Texas, said that while
Baker “probably listens to [the Arabs] more than we would like,” he’s “not an antisemite”
or anti-Israel.
Zeidman said that the reality of the Iraq situation was forcing changes in administration
policy that might make Jews nervous but were nonetheless necessary. “I love George
Bush, but someone has to talk to those guys,” Zeidman said, referring to Syria and
Iran. “They’re not going away. Is James Baker the right answer? Maybe he’s the cover
George Bush needs to move off his position.”
Zeidman was not alone. A former State Department official with close ties to the
Jewish community and a deep involvement in the Arab-Israeli peace process urged
American Jews to receive the report in a spirit of openness.
Aaron David Miller, who served as a key peace-process point man during both the
first Bush and the Clinton administration, told the Forward that it would be “inappropriate”
to formulate a “Jewish view” of the report and that there was no relation between
Baker’s earlier tiffs with the Jewish community and the present effort. “American
Jews should sit down and take a deep breath and understand this is a national issue
that concerns all Americans, including them,” Miller said. “We’re bogged down in
a major foreign policy debacle in Iraq. Does the report offer practical, innovative
and sound advice for extricating us?”
It was not only neoconservatives, however, who questioned Baker and the study group.
Old CIA Middle East hand Robert Baer — no neoconservative — wrote in Time magazine
that, while Baker is liked and respected among Sunni Arabs, “with the Sunni Arabs
from the Gulf paying for many of the bombs that are blowing up Shia markets and
mosques, you have to wonder if Baker is the right person to sort out the differences
between Iraq’s Shia and Sunni. Don’t we have unconflicted, disinterested statesmen
anymore?”
Next to questions like these, the Jewish organizations’ early-1990s problems with
Baker might seem like small, old potatoes. Still, the memory lingers.
“It was a bitter time and left everyone with a bad taste about Baker,” recalled
David Twersky, the American Jewish Congress’s director of international affairs.
“He didn’t like getting pressure from Aipac, and he gave better than he got.”
Fri. Dec 08, 2006
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Last edited by Alpha on Tue Dec 26, 2006 12:44 pm; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 11:37 pm Post subject: Why Condemning Israel and the Zionist Lobby is so Important |
| Jewish Lobby has taken control of US foreign policy - James Petras
http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1688&more=1&c=1
James Petras
December 22, 2006
“It’s no great secret why the Jewish agencies continue to trumpet support for the discredited policies of this failed administration. They see defense of Israel as their number-one goal, trumping all other items on the agenda. That single-mindedness binds them ever closer to a White House that has made combating Islamic terrorism its signature campaign. The campaign’s effects on the world have been catastrophic. But that is no concern of the Jewish agencies.” December 8, 2006 statement by JJ Goldberg, editor of Forward (the leading Jewish weekly in the United States)
Introduction:
Many Jewish writers, including those who are somewhat critical of Israel, have raised pointed questions about our critique of the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the United States and what they wrongly claim are our singular harsh critique of the state of Israel. Some of these accusers claim to see signs of ‘latent anti-Semitism’, others, of a more ‘leftist’ coloration, deny the influential role of the ZPC arguing that US foreign policy is a product of ‘geo-politics or the interests of big oil. With the recent publication of several widely circulated texts, highly critical of the power of the Zionist ‘lobby’, several liberal pro-Israel publicists generously conceded that it is a topic that should be debated (and not automatically stigmatized and dismissed) and perhaps be ‘taken into account.’
ZPC Deniers: Phony Arguments for Fake Claims
The main claims of ZPC deniers take several tacks: Some claim that the ZPC is just ‘another lobby’ like the Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club or the Society for the Protection of Goldfish. Others claim that by focusing mainly on Israel and by inference the ‘Lobby’, the critics of Zionism ignore the equally violent abuses of rulers, regimes and states elsewhere. This ‘exclusive focus’ on Israel, the deniers of ZPC argue, reveals a latent or overt anti-Semitism. They propose that human rights advocates condemn all human rights abusers everywhere (at the same time and with the same emphasis?). Others still argue that Israel is a democracy – at least outside of the Occupied Territories (OT) – and therefore is not as condemnable as other human rights violators and should be ‘credited’ for its civic virtues along with its human rights failings. Finally others still claim that, because of the Holocaust and ‘History-of-Two-Thousand-Years-of-Persecution’, criticism of Jewish-funded and led pro-Israel lobbies should be handled with great prudence, making it clear that one criticizes only specific abuses, investigates all charges – especially those from Arab/Palestinian/United Nations/European/Human Rights sources -- and recognizes that Israeli public opinion, the press and even the Courts or sectors of them may also be critical of regime policies.
These objections to treating the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict and the activities of Zionist Lobbies as central to peace and war serve to dilute, dissipate and deflate criticism and organized political activity directed at the ZPC and its directors in Israel.
The response of the critics of Israel and the ZPC to these attacks has been weak at best and cowardly at worst. Some critics have responded that their criticism is only directed toward a specific policy or leader, or to Israeli policies in the OT and that they recognize Israel is a democracy, that it requires secure borders, and that it is in the interests of the Israeli ‘people’ to lower their security barriers. Others argue that their criticism is directed at securing Israeli interests, influencing the Zionist Lobby or to opening a debate. They claim that the views of ‘most’ Jews’ in the US are not represented by the 52 organizations that make up the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations of America, or the thousands of PACs, local federations, professional associations and weekly publications which speak with one voice as unconditional supporters of every twist and turn in the policy of the Zionist State.
There are numerous similar lines of criticism, which basically avoid the fundamental issues raised by the Israeli state and the ZPC, and which we are obliged to address. The reason that criticism and action directed against Israel and the ZPC is of central importance today in any discussion of US foreign policy, especially (but not exclusively) of Middle East policy and US domestic policymaking is that they play a decisive role and have a world-historic impact on the present and future of world peace and social justice. We turn now to examine the ‘big questions’ facing Americans as a result of the power of Israel in the United States.
The Big Questions Raised by the ZPC and Israeli Power in the USA:
War or Peace:
Critical study of the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq, US involvement in providing arms to Israel (cluster bombs, two-ton bunker buster bombs and satellite surveillance intelligence) prior to, during and after Israel’s abortive invasion of Lebanon, Washington’s backing of the starvation blockade of the Palestinian people and the White House and Congress’ demands for sanctions and war against Iran are directly linked to Israeli state policy and its Zionist policy-makers in the Executive branch and US Congress. One needs to look no further than the documents, testimony and reports of AIPAC and the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations to observe their claims of success in authoring legislation, providing (falsified) intelligence, engaging in espionage (AIPAC) and turning documents over to Israeli intelligence (now dubbed ‘free speech’ by liberal Zionists).
If, as the overwhelming evidence indicates, the ZPC played a major role in the major wars of our time, wars capable of igniting new armed conflicts, then it ill behooves us to dilute the role of the Zionist/Jewish Lobby in promoting future US wars. Given Israel’s militarist-theocratic approach to territorial aggrandizement and its announced plans for future wars with Iran and Syria, and given the fact that the ZPC acts as an unquestioning and highly disciplined transmission belt for the Israeli state, then US citizens opposed to present and future US engagement in Middle East wars must confront the ZPC and its Israeli mentors. Moreover, given the extended links among the Islamic nations, the Israel/ZPC proposed ‘new wars’ with Iran will result in Global wars. Hence what is at stake in confronting the ZPC are questions which go beyond the Israeli-Palestine peace process, or even regional Middle East conflicts: it involves the big question of World Peace or War.
Democracy or Authoritarianism
Without the bluster and public hearings of former Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Jewish Lobby has systematically undermined the principal pillars of our fragile democracy. While the US Congress, media, academics, retired military and public figures are free to criticize the President, any criticism of Israel, much less the Jewish Lobby, is met with vicious attacks in all the op-ed pages of major newspapers by an army of pro-Israeli ‘expert’ propagandists, demands for firings, purges and expulsions of the critics from their positions or denial of promotions or new appointments. In the face of any prominent critic calling into question the Lobby’s role in shaping US policy to suit Israel’s interests, the entire apparatus (from local Jewish federations, AIPAC, the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations etc) go into action – smearing, insulting and stigmatizing the critics as ‘anti-Semites’. By denying free speech and public debate through campaigns of calumny and real and threatened repercussions the Jewish Lobby has denied Americans one of their more basic freedoms and constitutional rights.
The massive, sustained and well-financed hate campaigns directed at any congressional candidate critical of Israel effectively eliminates free speech among the political elite. The overwhelming influence of wealthy Jewish contributors to both parties – but especially the Democrats – results in the effective screening out of any candidate who might question any part of the Lobby’s Israel agenda. The takeover of Democratic campaign finance by two ultra-Zionist zealots, Senator Charles Schumer and Israeli-American Congressman Rahm Emanuel ensured that every candidate was totally subordinated to the Lobby’s unconditional support of Israel. The result is that there is no Congressional debate, let alone investigation, over the key role of prominent Zionists in the Pentagon involved in fabricating reports on Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and in designing and executing the war and the disastrous occupation policy. The Lobby’s ideologues posing as Middle East ‘experts’ dominate the op-ed and editorial pages of all the major newspapers (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post). In their pose as Middle East experts, they propagandize the Israeli line on the major television networks (CBS, NBC,ABC, Fox, and CNN) and their radio affiliates. The Lobby has played a prominent role in supporting and implementing highly repressive legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commission Act as well as modifying anti-corruption legislation to allow the Lobby to finance congressional ‘educational’ junkets to Israel. The head of Homeland Security with its over 150,000 functionaries and multi-billion dollar budget is none other than Zionist fanatic Michael Chertoff, head persecutor of Islamic charity organizations, Palestinian relief organizations and other ethnic Middle Eastern or Moslem constituencies in the US, which potentially might challenge the Lobby’s pro-Israel agenda.
The biggest threat to democracy in its fullest sense of the word – the right to debate, to elect, to legislate free of coercion – is found in the organized efforts of the Zionist lobby, to repress public debate, control candidate selection and campaigning, direct repressive legislation and security agencies against electoral constituencies opposing the Lobby’s agenda for Israel. No other lobby or political action group has as much sustained and direct influence over the political process – including the media, congressional debate and voting, candidate selection and financing of congressional allocation of foreign aid and Middle East agendas as the organized Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) and its indirect spokespeople heading key Congressional positions. A first step toward reversing the erosion of our democratic freedoms is recognizing and publicly exposing the ZPC’s nefarious organizational and financial activities and moving forward toward neutralizing their efforts.
Their Foreign Policy or Ours?
Intimately and directly related to the loss of democratic freedoms and a direct consequence of the Jewish lobby’s influence over the political process is the making of US Middle East policy and who benefits from it. The entire political effort of the Lobby (its spending, ethnic baiting, censorship and travel junkets) is directed toward controlling US foreign policy and, through US power, to influence the policy of US allies, clients and adversaries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The Lobby’s systematic curtailment of our democratic freedoms is intimately related to our own inability to influence our nation’s foreign policy. Our majoritarian position against the Iraq War, the repudiation of the main executioner of the War (the White House) and our horror in the face of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and destruction of Gaza are totally neutralized by Zionist influence over Congressional and White House policymakers. The recently victorious Congressional Democrats repudiate their electorate and follow the advice and dictates of the pro-Zionist leadership (Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emmanuel, Stephan Israel and others) by backing an escalation of troops and an increase in military spending for the war in Iraq. Bush follows the war policy against Iran proposed by the zealous Zionist fanatics in the American Enterprise Institute, repudiating the diplomatic proposals of the bi-partisan Baker Commission. Congress quadruples US arms stored in Israel (supposedly for dual use) in the aftermath of Israel’s bombing of Southern Lebanon with one million anti-personnel bomblets from cluster bombs in direct defiance of US electoral opinion. While hundreds of millions of undernourished women and children suffer and die in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the Lobby ensures that over half of US foreign aid goes to Israeli Jews with per capita incomes of over $22,000 USD.
No other organized political action group or public relations firm acting on behalf of the Cuban and Venezuelan exiles or Arab, African, Chinese or European Union states comes remotely near the influence of the Zionist lobby in shaping US policy to serve the interest of Israel.
While the Lobby speaks for less than 2% of the US electorate, its influence on foreign policy far exceeds the great majority who have neither comparable organizational nor financial muscle to impose their views.
Never in the history of the US republic or empire has a powerful but tiny minority been able to wield so much influence in using out nation’s military and economic power and diplomatic arm-twisting in the service of a foreign government. Neither the Francophiles during the American Revolution, the Anglophiles in the Civil War and the German Bund in the run-up to World War Two, nor the (anti-China) Nationalist Taiwan Lobby possessed the organizational power and sustained political influence that the ZPC has on US foreign and domestic policy at the service of the State of Israel.
Confronting the Lobby Matters
The question of the power of the Lobby over US policies of war or peace, authoritarianism or democracy and over who defines the interests served by US foreign policy obviously go far beyond the politics of the Middle East, the Israeli-colonial land grabs in Palestine and even the savage occupation of Iraq. The playing out of Zionist influence over the greatest military power in the world, with the most far-reaching set of client states, military bases, deadly weapons and decisive voice in international bodies (IMF/World Bank/United Nations Security Council) means that the Lobby has a means to leverage its reach in most regions of the world. This leverage power extends over a range of issues, from defending the fortunes of murderous Russian-Jewish gangster oligarchs, to bludgeoning European allies of the US to complicity with Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The ZPC represents a basic threat to our existence as a sovereign state and our ability to influence whom we elect and what agendas and interests our representatives will pursue. Even worse, by serving Israeli interests, we are becoming complicit with a State whose Supreme Court legalizes political assassinations across national boundaries, torture, systematic violations of international law and a regime which repudiates United Nations resolutions and unilaterally invades and bombs its neighbors and practices military colonist expansionism. In a word Israel resonates and feeds into the most retrograde tendencies and brutal practices of contemporary American politics. In this sense the Lobby through its media, Congressional influence and think tanks is creating an Israeli look-alike. Like Israel, the US has established its own Pentagon assassination teams; like Israel, it invades and colonizes Iraq; like Israel, it violates and rejects any constitutional or international legal restraints and systematically tortures accused but untried prisoners.
Because of these fundamental considerations, we cannot oblige our Jewish ‘progressive’ colleagues and compatriots and refrain from confronting the Zionist Lobby with force and urgency. Too many of our freedoms are at stake; too little time is left before they succeed in securing a greater military escalation; too little of our sovereignty remains in the face of the concerted effort by the Lobby and its Middle Eastern ‘expert-ideologues’ to push and shove us into a new and more devastating war with Iran at the behest of Israel’s pursuit of Middle East dominance.
No other country, abuser or not, of human rights, with or without electoral systems, has the influence over our domestic and foreign policy as does the state of Israel. No other Lobby has the kind of financial power and organizational reach as the Jewish Lobby in eroding our domestic political freedoms or our war-making powers. For those reasons alone, it stands to reason, that we American have a necessity to put our fight against Israel and its Lobby at the very top of our political agenda. It is not because Israel has the worst human rights agenda in the world – other states have even worst democratic credentials – but because of its role in promoting its US supporters to degrade our democratic principles, robbing us of our freedom to debate and our sovereignty to decide our own interests. The Lobby puts the military and budgetary resources of the Empire at the service of Greater Israel – and that results in the worst human rights in the world.
Democratic, just and peaceful responses to the Big Questions that face Americans, Europeans, Muslims, Jews and other peoples of the world passes through the defeat and dismantlement of the Israeli-directed Zionist Power Configuration in America. Nothing less will allow us to engage in an open debate on the alternatives to repression at home and imperialism abroad.
Last edited by Alpha on Wed Dec 27, 2006 8:30 am; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 8:09 am Post subject: |
| From: "Jeffrey Blankfort"
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 13:54:11 -0800
Subject: Forward: Jewish Groups Mute Criticism of Iraq Report
Once again the power of the Jewish Lobby prevails over the Old Line US Corporate Establishment. Can any other lobby match its prowess?
http://www.forward. com/articles/ groups-mute- criticism- of-iraq-report/
Groups Mute Criticism of Iraq Report
Nathan Guttman | Fri. Dec 15, 2006
Jewish and pro-Israel groups, after initially greeting the report of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group with outrage, have begun to mute their criticisms on the basis of assurances that the Bush administration will not adopt the report’s proposed linkage between Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Public and private statements by administration officials have convinced leaders of the organized Jewish community to refrain from actively opposing the report, produced by a bipartisan panel co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker, a Republican, and ex-congressman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat.
“All we are hearing,” said an official at one major Jewish agency, “is that Bush has no plans to shift his Middle East policy and that he will choose not to adopt the recommendations in the Baker report that have to do with that.”
President Bush is expected to conclude his consultations on a new Iraq policy in the next week and to announce his decisions by year’s end. The administration has made it clear that the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations will be only one source of guidance.
The part of the report that most angered pro-Israel activists was the attempt to link a solution in Iraq to progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The situation in Iraq is linked with events in the region,” the report reads. “Several Iraqi, U.S., and international officials commented to us that Iraqi opposition to the United States — and support for [Shi’ite radical Moqtada] Sadr — spiked in the aftermath of Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon.” Events in Syria, Iran and Afghanistan are also cited as bearing on Iraq.
The report calls for an American and international effort to solve the Israeli-Arab conflict, based on U.N. resolutions 242 and 338 and on Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Baker and Hamilton also recommend that America engage with Syria and Iran to solve the regional problems regarding Iraq.
In a December 7 conference call of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, leaders of most groups voiced reservations over this part of the Iraq Study Group report and called for action to block any Israel-Iraq linkage. Israel’s consul general in New York, Arye Mekel, who took part in the discussion, reportedly said that while Israel will not try to intervene in an American decision-making process, it hopes to make clear that the two disputes are unrelated. Mekel, according to several participants, portrayed the report as negative from Israel’s standpoint and said that Baker is responsible for the report’s language on Israel. Other participants, including Aipac executive director Howard Kohr, stressed the importance of ensuring that the recommendations seen as linking Israel and Iraq are not adopted.
The only dissenting voice in the call was that of Seymour Reich, president of the Israel Policy Forum, who said the Jewish community should not lose sight of the need to support peace efforts in the Middle East. “I’m against any linkage,” Reich later told the Forward, “but at the same time it’s important to open every door that can lead to negotiations with the Palestinians.”
Numerous Jewish groups issued statements last week opposing the Baker-Hamilton report. The Anti-Defamation League accused the study group of falling “into the traps of inappropriately linking stability in Iraq to a solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” The American Jewish Committee called the report’s call for a new diplomatic offensive “old thinking” based on unsuccessful diplomatic efforts. The Zionist Organization of America said the report’s recommendations would “cripple the war on Islamist terror.”
Aipac refrained from directly questioning the report, but issued a statement detailing Iran’s actions in the region and calling Iran the major source of instability.
The only group openly supporting the report was Americans for Peace Now, which called on Bush to adopt the recommendations in full. “It is gratifying that a bipartisan panel, comprised of seasoned policy experts, has reached conclusions that should have intuitively been adopted by this administration long ago,” said Debra DeLee, the group’s president.
While criticizing recommendations in the report dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most Jewish leaders refrained from dismissing the report altogether. “Anything we do about this report should be sensitive to the entire report and to its recommendations, which are basically good,” said Rabbi Steven Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. He added that the Jewish community should “be wise in the way it responds.”
The president of the Arab American Institute, James Zogby, called the Jewish organizations’ response a “knee jerk reaction,” saying that America needs to restore its credibility in the Arab world. “It is possible to go on with a ‘U.S. and Israel against the world’ policy, but then Iraq will disintegrate and Iran will take over. Will Israel be stronger then?”
Israeli officials took a cautious approach. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on his ministers to avoid commenting, calling it an internal American issue. At the same time, Olmert said he had no reason to believe the administration would change its attitude toward Syria or Iran.
In private conversations, Israeli officials expressed outrage over the report, arguing that the committee — while interviewing eight Arab ambassadors and many other Arab officials, spoke only to one Israeli, Ephraim Sneh. He is described in the report as deputy defense minister, though when interviewed he was only a member of Knesset.
Fri. Dec 15, 2006 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 12:38 pm Post subject: US ‘empire firsters’ vs Zioncons - James Petras |
| US ‘empire firsters’ vs Zioncons - James Petras
http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1666&more=1&c=1
Texas versus Tel Aviv: US Policy in the Middle East
The struggle within the US power structure between the economic
empire builders (EEB) and the civilian militarists/Zioncons over US
Middle East and global policy is now out in the open and intensifying.
:: 10.29.2006
The EEB now have a politically powerful organizational expression, the
Baker Commission (known officially as the Iraq Study Group) led by the
formidable former Secretary of State, James Baker. The EEB are backed
by
a group of bipartisan congressional leaders, sectors of the traditional
military elite, a powerful coalition of Texas-based oil and gas groups
and sectors of Wall Street financial houses and potentially a large
majority of public opinion. Against them are the civilian militarists
in
the Pentagon, State Department and White House (Rumsfelt, Chaney, Rice,
Bolton and Bush), a declining majority of Congressional Democrats and
Republicans, the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations headed by
the America-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and their
influential apparatchiks in the mass media and their numerous ‘grass
roots’ political fronts (political action committees).
What is at stake is of fundamental importance to the future of US
politics; not only in the Middle East, which is the immediate catalyst
for the drawing up of sides, but the entire way in which US policy is
formulated and equally important how the US will engage in defending
and
expanding its global empire.
Crises and Opportunities: The Basis of Confrontation
Several factors have converged to precipitate this intra-elite
confrontation. First and foremost is the prolonged, costly and
un-winnable war in Iraq. The Zioncon-civilian-militarist (ZCCM) policy
of colonial invasions and military occupation in pursuit of destroying
Israel’s adversaries and enhancing its dominance of the Middle East
has
weakened the US efforts to sustain its global dominance. The vast
absorption of military resources, troops, reserves and logistical
support systems in pursuit of a prolonged guerrilla war without end,
has
severely weakened Washington’s capacity to apply military force to
intimidate and enforce or intervene in other strategic regions or
countries of conflict. The military losses in Iraq have undermined
domestic public support for present and future overseas military
interventions in support of empire building. The sustained military and
political resistance to the vast US military occupation army has
lowered
the intimidation factor so necessary in sustaining imperial diplomacy.
In a word, the Iraq war has become a major impediment to empire
building, its defense and its domestic economic and political support,
a
principal motivating factor in the crystallization of the Baker
Commission.
Secondly the ZCCM policy of promoting Israel's Middle East supremacy is
enormously damaging to some of the biggest petroleum and financial
institutions in the US. At a time when the headlines of the major
financial press read "seas of cash flooding into the Gulf brings an
explosion of investment companies", "Dubai plans fund to tap Gulf
liquidity" and "Global insurers see rich seam to be mined in Saudi
Arabia",(Financial Times Oct 19, 2006 p.4), the White House and
Pentagon
plot new highly destabilizing military confrontations with Syria and
Iran, potentially wrecking hundreds of billions of dollars in lucrative
investments, contracts and returns. The entire Zioncon political
apparatus is the only major force in the US consistently pushing for
Congressional and Executive military action jeopardizing the potential
profits of major US petroleum, investment banking, insurance and other
key sectors of the US global economic elite. The paradox is that many
of
the same wealthy investment bankers eager to tap into the Middle East
bonanza are the same groups, which finance the AIPAC-Zioncon
warmongers.
This raises concerns of cross pressures, double allegiances, tribal
loyalties and dollar signs!
From the perspective of defending US global interests, being tied down
militarily in Iraq in a long-term, large-scale engagement is not only
counterproductive but has created a political crisis. The domestic
consensus among the political elite concerning the compatibility of
imperialism and democracy is threatened with being torn asunder to
sustain the war. The ZCCM power bloc increasingly resorts to
authoritarian war powers totally at variance with the existing
constitutional order peeling layers of legitimacy from the existing
political system.
The Baker Commission is attempting to reassert the supremacy of the
market over the military in defining the driving forces of empire
building, that is, the economic interests of US petrol and finance
capital over Israeli military dominance in shaping US Middle East
interests.
For economic determinists, for whom foreign policy is simply the
unmediated result of powerful economic interests, the failure of the US
government to scuttle a mendicant, miniscule militarist state forever
milking the US Treasury in favor of the most powerful US energy
companies pursuing multi-billion dollar deals with resource-rich
free-market Arab-Muslim countries is an inexplicable mystery.
Inexplicable because these ‘economic determinists’ are either
willfully
blind or they deliberately choose to ignore the political power of the
ZCCM power configuration in overriding US global economic interests. To
continue with the current state of affairs is to deepen the political
crisis of empire – both domestically and internationally – and to
lose
out on the greatest economic opportunities in the global economy.
The Empire Strikes Back
The relative passivity and/or impotence of the US ‘empire
firsters’, in
relation to the ZCCM, in the run up to the Iraq invasion can be
attributed to several factors. In the first place there is the
extraordinary systematic and well-organized penetration of the Bush
Administration by the ZCCM. Armed with a ‘mission’, an intense and
highly motivated belief in military action as the supreme arbiter of
imperial expansion, the civilian militarists joined forces with the
Zioncons who embraced with equal zeal their mission of using US
military
power to enhance Israeli dominance in the Middle East as the
over-riding
priority in US foreign policy.
During a long march through the institutions over the previous 25
years,
the ZCCM was able to penetrate and take over all the key policy
positions in the Pentagon, State Department and White House. While
there
were scattered objections by marginal voices – namely retired
military
officials, traditional conservatives, pacifists and leftists, few were
able or willing to point their finger at the Zioncon power
configuration
especially after 9/11. More important, the economic empire builders
lacked an alternative political leadership and bought into the civilian
militarists ‘War on Terror’ as a necessary security strategy and
the
Pentagon-Zioncon claim that the Iraq invasion would result in a quick
and complete victory (with plenty of benefits for all). The economic
empire builders, accustomed to dealing with well-informed bright and
capable pro-Israel colleagues in the financial world, assumed that
their
counterpart political-military strategists were equally competent in
‘advising and directing’ imperial politics. What the economic elite
did
not foresee was the fact that the Zioncon policy-makers did not share
their political priorities: Zioncon policy was not directed toward
creating a stable regime friendly to US political-economic interests
but
toward physically destroying any Arab or Muslim country capable of
challenging Israeli domination of the region. Destroying Iraq for
Greater Israeli-US dominance meant the dismembering of the Iraqi
Republic, the imposition of a brutal US colonial regime and the gradual
introduction of ethnically-cleansed tribal client regimes which would
be
subject to Israel interests and open to foreign oil companies. The
promise of the latter was a ‘sweetener’ thrown in to secure big oil
support or neutrality for the pro-Israeli (Israel-centered) policy.
While the ZCCM succeeded in destroying Iraq as a viable state and
economy, thus accomplishing the Israeli goals of the war, the economic
empire-builders witnessed the complete and total unraveling of all the
political-economic payoffs promised by the Zioncons. The invasion led
to
prolonged peoples guerrilla war. The Zionist-designed destruction of
the
Iraqi state institutions (with Paul Bremer’s dismissing all Iraqi
state
employees, officials and military personnel) led to hundreds of
thousands of former trained and armed ex-soldiers, officers and police
joining the armed resistance. Regional instability and hostility to US
economic interests multiplied. As it became transparent throughout the
Middle East and elsewhere that the ZCCM were masters of US Middle East
policy and that Washington’s priority was fighting Israel’s wars,
the US
became a pariah in the Middle East, like its Israeli partner.
The misplaced confidence of a convergence of interests between the
economic empire builders and the ZCCM soon gave way as the political
and
economic costs began to weigh on the minds of the ideologues and
subsequently the political leaders of the economic elite. Numerous
scatter-shot responses weakened the most vulnerable and obvious targets
among the Zioncons. Initially it was the traditional conservatives who
sounded the nationalist alarm, pointing to the Israel-Firsters’
takeover
of US policy in the interest of Israel. A much weaker, but pointed,
criticism of the Israeli lobby appeared in the web pages of individual
leftist writers. Former intelligence, FBI officials and retired
colonels
and generals with continued ties to their agencies attacked the
Zioncons, referred to as ‘neo-cons’, for misleading and falsifying
data
in the run-up to the war. Key Israeli operatives in top echelons of the
Pentagon (Wolfowitz and Feith) withdrew from office. The FBI arrested
two leading members of AIPAC for spying for Israel. US public opinion,
thanks to the internet and alternative sources of information and
despite the massive pro-Israel bias in the corporate media, registered
a
near majority view that the Iraq invasion was in Israel’s, not US,
interests. Leading civilian militarists, Rumsfeld and Chaney, became
the
most disliked politicians in the Administrations.
Despite these setbacks in personnel, the ZCCM apparatus remained
intact.
AIPAC still drew raves from all the leading Congress members, Party and
Executive officials at their yearly conference. Congress still provided
near unanimous support for the Israel invasion of Lebanon, approval for
over $3 billion dollars (the annual dole) to Israel, and
enthusiastically backed Israel’s starvation blockade of the
democratically elected Palestinian government in Gaza. Rumsfeld,
Chaney,
Bush, Rice and the entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major
Jewish Organizations of America continued to pursue the ‘war to
victory’
in Iraq and new wars strategies against Iran, Syria and elsewhere, even
as Bush’s popularity plummeted, the death toll among US soldiers
surpassed 3000 and US economic weaknesses became more apparent.
The widespread, dispersed and muted criticism of the economic elite
finally crystallized, particularly among the economic empire-builders,
embodied in James Baker, lifetime confidant of the Bush family and
‘man
of confidence’ in US-Middle East financial and petroleum circles.
The Baker Panel
The strength of the Zioncon power configuration is evident even in the
manner and composition as well as the deliberations of the panel, which
James Baker III has formed to present alternatives to current US policy
in the Middle East. Baker’s panel is bipartisan, including former
Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders, CIA directors, a
retired Supreme Court Justice, an ex-Secretary of Defense and other
establishment notables. Secondly the panel does not include a single
Zioncon ideologue, retired Bush Jr. administration official or allied
Congressperson, though some are sprinkled among the scores of
‘experts’
involved in the four working groups. Baker’s tactic is to be
inclusive
enough to represent various strands of elite opinion to buttress its
authority when its report is presented to the President, Congress and
the public, and selective to minimize the influence of the ‘Israel
Firsters’ and the ‘war to military victory’ crowd. Thirdly the
Baker
Commission has as its strategic goal the subordination of military
policy to economic empire building, rather than the current approach of
harnessing economic policy to military conquests and Zioncon
ideological
missions. What this means in practical terms is giving greater room for
diplomacy, heterodox political alliances based on common economic
interests and pursuit of lucrative economic contracts and agreements
with Arab and Muslim nations. Fourthly, the Baker Commission has not
and
will not directly attack the Zioncon power structure or even question
the civilian militarists who run the Bush War Machine. Instead the
panel
will de facto set in notion a series of alternative policies which
implicitly point to a new political administration – one which is
free
of the Israeli stranglehold on Washington’s Middle East policy and
beholden first and foremost to US empire building without the
encumbrances of Israel’s regional power grabs.
The tactic of ignoring the Zioncon power bloc while building an
alternative is a delicate operation given the power of the Jewish
lobbies to manipulate the ‘anti-Israel’, ‘anti-Semite’ labeling
technique amplified by its Congressional and media acolytes. Hence the
Baker Commission will reiterate the ritual affirmation of support for
Israel’s security and massive foreign aid package, while emphasizing
greater pressure on Israel to resolve the Palestinian issue. How far
Baker will move on the Palestinian issue depends on how much legitimacy
he feels the Commission has to withstand a Zioncon-orchestrated calumny
campaign. Will the Abe Foxmans of the ADL have the gall to accuse a
bipartisan, gold ribbon establishment elite of being anti-Semite for
not
fighting Israel’s wars and not backing Israel’s policy of ethnic
cleansing?
If Baker has moved methodically and prudently toward a re-orientation
of
US policy from the line pushed by the ZCCM, he has done so by carefully
organizing an army of researchers, experts and notables whose reports
will be distilled into a series of policy proposals which will argue
for
a ‘winning empire-building strategy’ as opposed to the current
impasse
and decline of empire. Baker knows first hand the power of the Zioncon
configuration and therefore it is highly unlikely that he will openly
attribute the current disastrous course of policy to the subordination
of US policy to the interests of the State of Israel. Instead he has
established an organizational apparatus whose composition in fact
excludes the Zioncons, and therefore re-establishes US imperial
interests as the centerpiece of policy-making. Likewise Baker will not
directly confront Rumsfeld, Chaney, Rice, Elliot Abrams and the other
civilian-militarists in power; instead he will present a series of
findings and proposals, which will be incompatible with their tenure in
office. Baker is counting on the growing majority of Republican and
Democratic Congress-members questioning current policy, a shift in the
mass media, growing dissent among active Generals, career State
Department and Pentagon officials, sectors of the economic elite and
massive repudiation by public opinion to force the
Rumsfeld-Hadley-Abrams power center out of office and their replacement
by officials and advisers more open to a new approach to the Middle East.
If it is true that the primary purpose of the Baker Commission is to
take back US Middle East policy-making from the ‘Israel Firsters’
and
secondly to subordinate military approaches to empire building to
market
interests, the question arises as to what strategic policies, tactical
alliances, regional realignments and specific proposals dealing with
the
US military presence in Iraq Baker will propose?
The Baker Plan
First and foremost it should be understood that Baker’s perspective
is
how to protect US empire building on a global scale, and in particular
defend and expand US imperial interests in the Middle East. Secondly he
is concerned with a restoration of US military interventionist
capability in the face of the precipitous losses in personnel and
morale
resulting from the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Thirdly Baker is
concerned with limiting the political-economic fallout of any reduction
in US military presence in Iraq on strategic client states in the
region. Fourthly he seeks to build new tactical relations with current
adversaries without alienating Israel and subsequently its vociferous
and aggressive agents in the US.
Within these parameters Baker has several lines of policy which are
open
and being explored.
The Baker Options
In all likelihood, Baker’s Panel will not recommend a phased
withdrawal
of US troops unless there is a collapse of the Iraqi army and police.
Instead he will press for a policy of including the main combatants or
insurgents (including the Baathists and pro-Iranians) in a
‘power-sharing’ scheme in the hope that the resistance can be
fragmented, isolated and eventually weakened. This will be packaged as
a
‘new direction’. To that end Baker will propose negotiations with
Iran
and Syria in order to secure their influence in pressuring their allies
in Iraq to join in the power-sharing scheme. In order to enter into
discussion with Iran and Syria and to persuade them to cut off military
support for the Iraqi resistance, he will have to offer some sort of
peaceful coexistence, in effect dropping the threats of military
intervention, economic sanctions and the funding of CIA-sponsored
terrorist groups. Clearly Iran and Syria will not co-operate if
Washington pursues the Zioncon militarist agenda of confrontation.
Baker
knows that within the Iranian power structure, there are liberal
technocrats, wealthy business leaders, opportunistic clerics, corrupt
state officials in the oil and gas sector and leading politicians who
are open to negotiating with the US and eager to cut a deal with
Washington, even at the expense of their Iraqi Shia colleagues – if
Washington makes an offer of power-sharing in Iraq, drops its
belligerent posturing and frees itself of the Zioncon policy of Israeli
regional supremacy. Syria and Iran have a track record of collaborating
with Washington in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq and even
afterward, sharing intelligence and subsequently supporting the
US-orchestrated electoral process. That important sectors of the Iraqi
Shia resistance look to Iran for material and moral support is
unquestionable; that they would abide by a US-Iranian agreement which
in
effect retains US military presence and its current puppets is
doubtful.
Baker may underestimate the degree of autonomy, which the local Shia
resistance has secured. A US-Iranian-Syrian deal would also exclude the
important role that the non-Shia (Sunnis, Baathists and others)
resistance plays in the war.
The ‘Yugoslav Solution’, namely the breakup of the Iraqi Republic
into
client mini-states (what the Zioncons like Leslie Gelb, former
President
of the Council on Foreign Relations have advocated as a ‘Tri-State
Solution’) is an option, which the Baker Commission is surely
considering. This is the favored plan of the Democratic Party Hawks,
like Hilary Clinton, Charles Schumer and Joseph Biden. This would
involve the division of Iraq into a series of mini-fiefdoms run by
US-Israeli clients: Kurds in the North, Sunni tribal leaders in the
Center-West and a Shia South with Baghdad starved into submission. This
would be a complicated, violent and difficult scheme to execute because
it depends on massive ethnic cleansing, uprooting millions. Moreover
the
highly unequal geographical distribution of natural resources would
exclude the most combative group – the Sunnis from the most lucrative
sources of income.
The Tri-State Solution would require the break up of the current army
and its reorganization along ethnic-religious lines at a time of highly
volatile military conflict and with virtually no leadership with any
standing in the resistance willing to settle for an impoverished
fragment of a hitherto unified secular state. Apart from Iraqi tribal
leaders, expatriate clients and the Kurds, the process of
national-deconstruction would increase conflict, not ameliorate it. The
positive side would be the strong support, which this proposal would
receive from Israel and thus the entire Jewish Lobby and its clients
–The US Congress and White House.
Almost without exception, Israel’s ideological soldiers have taken to
the opinion columns of all the major newspapers, television and radio
shows (as self-reputed Middle East experts) to promote the breaking up
of Iraq into mini-states and to pursue the killing fields beyond the
over 650,000 slaughtered Iraqi civilians and 3,000 dead US soldiers.
One
only has to read the obscene op-ed articles which dominate the October
26, 2006 issue of the Financial Times to capture this unrelenting
campaign to totally obliterate Iraq from the map and from Israel’s
cross
hairs (see Michael Rubin’s "Why Withdrawal from Iraq is the Worst
Option", Lawrence Freedman’s "America Must Learn to have Patience",
Richard Betts’ "Look to Bosnia, not Vietnam, for a Realistic
Solution"
Financial Times, October 26, 2006 page 13). Needless to say, with Jews
representing less than 0.5% of US armed forces personnel and an even
far
smaller proportion being active soldiers on the front lines and with
virtually none of the prominent Zioncon ideologues having children or
grandchildren among the US occupation troops facing hostile Iraqi
resistance, it is easy for the Rubins and Freedmans of the US and UK to
preach ‘patience’ for an endless war.
Baker has to face up to a full-scale ideological offensive by
Israel’s
US-based ideological soldiers, precisely as almost everyone else is
turning against the war, and ever more Americans find the courage to
point a finger of responsibility at the Jewish Lobby. Oblivious to
their
isolation among Americans concerned with the useless loss of American
lives and limbs, the Israel-Firsters are focusing all their attention
on
influencing or neutralizing the recommendations, which come out of the
Baker Commission. The Zioncons follow the British imperial dictum: Rule
via unending war or ruin through tribal/ethnic mini-states.
Since serious diplomatic openings to Syria and Iran, which Baker has
already suggested ("politics is about talking to your enemies"), are
highly unlikely given the current direction of White House policy and
given the lack of an Iraqi leader with any following willing to carve
up
the country, the Baker Panel may be inclined to pay lip-service to a
proposal for a gradual ‘redeployment’, the gradual reduction of US
combat troops from frontline positions. This may be making a virtue of
necessity, as the US Generals in Iraq have stated, the US cannot long
sustain 140,000 occupation troops. The ‘redeployment strategy’
however
is not a strategy for withdrawal but a method of co-opting Democratic
support for the continuation of the war into 2008, the Presidential
election year- especially in light of Republican losses in Congress and
the Senate. (Leading members of the Democratic Party, like Clinton,
Biden and Schumer want to send even more troops to Iraq!) The lowering
of US troop strength in the absence of a political power-sharing deal
with the local insurgents and Iran however is likely to increase the
likelihood of regime fragility and greater defections/infiltration of
the US-directed ‘Iraqi’ Army. A US countdown will increase the
likelihood of ‘coalition’ partners following suit even earlier and
withdrawing their troops even before the Americans. Already the top
British Army General Richard Dannatt took the unprecedented stand of
publicly voicing his dissent from Prime Minister Blair’s support for
the
war, stating that the presence of coalition troops only ‘exacerbates
the
security problem in Iraq (Daily Mail (London), Oct 12, 2006).
The Baker Commission’s task of finding ‘new policies’ to contain
the
effects of the Iraq invasion are incompatible with the increasingly
belligerent Middle East policy pursued by the Bush White House and
their
Zioncon supporters. Baker cannot avoid challenging the Zioncon Middle East policy if he is to stabilize Iraq: he needs Iranian and Syrian
co-operation to co-opt insurgents and/or subdivide Iraq. No amount of
clever maneuvering, at which Baker excels (as witnessed by his ‘smart
moves’ in the stolen election in Florida 2000), can avoid the hard
realities of a losing regional war, in which the US is playing with an
ever-weaker hand of cards. At some point, as the US debacle deepens and
US public disapproval of Bush’s handling of the invasion exceeds its
current 62% and as the resistance to occupation itself grows and turns
even bloodier, as the casualties and deaths of Americans climb by the
hundreds each month, as the ‘civil war’ in Iraq totally undermines
all
government authority, as one US client replaces another and most of all
as popular rebellion threatens the rule of the US strategic assets in
the regions (like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt), then and only then
in
the name of the empire, of the free market and of oil will Baker be
forced to turn against the Zioncon-militarists architects of Middle East
policy and call for an accelerated withdrawal.
Needless to say US public opinion is running far ahead of any
elite-designed ‘new course’. Fifty percent of Americans between
18-29
believe that ‘the work of the Israel Lobby in Congress and the Bush
Administration has been a key factor for going to war with Iraq and now
confronting Iran’. Over 52% of US liberals hold similar beliefs.
The elite divisions in an around the Administration are coming to the
fore: Alberto Fernandez, Director of Public Diplomacy at the State
Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs publicly denounced US
‘arrogance and stupidity in Iraq’ right after Bush came out for
‘staying
the course’. Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State from
2001-2005,
came out for a ‘phased withdrawal of US forces in Iraq’.
As the Zioncon-civilian-militarists hunker down in their White House
situation rooms and among their moneyed backers, as Baker’s Iraq
Study
Group grope for ‘proposals’ without interlocutors in the
President’s
office and without followers in the America public, it is clear that in
the absence of any consequential withdrawal of US troops, the wounds of
war will fester and spread from the battle fronts of Baghdad to the
streets of America. Only a catastrophic defeat in the Middle East will
move us to a new course, out of Iraq, at peace with Iran and most of
all
out of the stranglehold of the Israel Lobby albatross.
November 2006 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 9:25 pm Post subject: |
| Cowboys Differ on Iran Attack
By GARY LEUPP
The reaction to the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report suggests that a showdown is shaping up within the U.S. power elite between two different sets of cowboys. On the one hand, there are the George W. Bush cowboys who want to expand their conquests from Afghanistan and Iraq into Syria and Iran. It's a natural extension of the Manifest Destiny doctrine that underpinned the conquest of the "Wild West," the annexation of almost half of Mexico's territory in the 1840s, the "opening of Japan" resulting from gunboat diplomacy in 1854, the Marines' overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, and the establishment of a colonial empire from the Pacific to the Caribbean following the Spanish-American War. Bush and Dick Cheney saw nothing wrong with the Vietnam War (except the possibility that they might be personally involved, since they had other priorities at the time). They really liked the first Gulf War, but were disappointed it didn't conquer more. Thus Dubya told Mickey Herskowitz, a Houston Chronicle sports columnist helping ghostwrite his autobiography in 1999 that, "My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade [Iraq]---if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it."
On the other hand, there are the Jim Baker-type cowboys who question the feasibility of further conquest at this time, and want to lasso in their wayward buckaroo buddies and rowdy youngins before they get everybody into deeper horseshit in them foreign parts. The Baker cowboys are saying talk to the natives at least, smoke the peace-pipe if necessary, then ride off into the sunset leaving a fort or two behind proudly waving the tattered flag to help save face.
Dubya's cowpokes say, "No, we don't talk to the natives in those rich lands, overflowing with milk and honey and petroleum products, that God made for us." Like a spirit-filled country parson, Bush declared (to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2003), "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." Solving that problem of course means making all of Southwest Asia U.S. and Israel-friendly.
(Here the concept of the "promised land," a central theme in the Old Testament which envisions an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates and deeply affects modern Zionism, nicely dovetails with the entitlement notion so long operative in American psychology and mythology. The Pilgrims felt God gave them the heathen Indians' land, and even the most progressive American artists, such as Woody Guthrie ---"this land is your land, this land is my land"---and Bruce Springsteen---""I believe in a promised land"---draw on that powerful, ultimately religious concept. The twin myths of divine favor to the biblical Israelites and to the European settlers of America can easily enough in the whiskey-impacted cowboy mind produce the delusion that God wants a Yankee war on any oil-rich Muslim country. Especially after 9-11 because "they" attacked "us.")
The Bush gang, backed up by an Israeli posse, says the Syrian and Iranian leaders are evil. Dick Cheney, real bold behind his 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun, has declared, "We don't negotiate with evil. We defeat it." (Especially in a canned-hunt situation.)
But the Baker cowboys respond, "Well sure they're evil. They're murderous heathens. But we have to at least parlay with some of them, if it keeps us god-fearing folks from getting massacred. That's just common sense."
The ISG doesn't question the decision to invade Iraq, problematize its morality or acknowledge the humanity of the Iraqi resistance braves in the face of the Great White Father's assault. It doesn't say, "Pardners, you done wrong, and gotta be held to account." They don't want to deal with any of that history; they just want to move on. (Just like Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz, who having disseminated so much disinformation to get Americans to back the assault on Iraq, dismissed the embarrassing collapse of the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as a merely "historical issue" just a few months after the crime had occurred.) These cowboys aren't interested in going back and dredging up all that dirt, or questioning the need for the cavalry to stay in Iraq for ages to come. They just want the troops out of rifle range, as much as possible, so that the commonfolk back home don't start forming a lynch mob marching on DC. That means asking the Syrians and Iranians to help out.
* * * * *
That recommendation---that the U.S. in the context of a regional conference sit down and talk with those it wants to destroy---was the one most immediately and emphatically rejected by Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other top officials. That rejection is a strong indication that Dick Cheney continues to steer foreign policy assisted by neocon lieutenants such as Elliott Abrams and David Wurmser. From his undisclosed location, undaunted by abysmal popularity ratings, Cheney seems to keep Condi in line and on board the program, and during his weekly lunches with Bush encourages the cowboy president's messianic vision of a Greater Middle East free of terrorism, dotted with U.S. bases "protecting" the oil fields, friendly with Israel, and affording infinite profit opportunities to U.S. corporations.
Notice how the neocons out of power (including Richard Perle and David Frum) who have recently criticized Bush for his failure to properly subdue Iraq have spared Cheney, no doubt because they see him as their real remaining ally and rock of support in the administration. He may not share their emotional connection to Israel, so central to the neocon movement, but like them he is committed to using U.S. force to refashion the Middle East. He thinks in terms of securing U.S. geopolitical advantage vis-à-vis other imperialist powers and rising capitalist China as the U.S. economy relatively declines. (The U.S. GDP this year for the first time lags behind that of the European Union.) His interests dovetail with those of the neocons, which is why he seeded the administration with them when he constructed Bush's cabinet after the 2000 election.
As Robert Dreyfuss pointed out in the American Prospect in May 2006, Cheney sees China as the biggest long-term threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East, if not the world: "For the Cheneyites, Middle East policy is tied to China, and in their view China's appetite for oil makes it a strategic competitor to the United States in the Persian Gulf region. Thus, they regard the control of the Gulf as a zero-sum game. They believe that the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. military buildup in Central Asia, the invasion of Iraq, and the expansion of the U.S. military presence in the Gulf states have combined to check China's role in the region. In particular, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the creation of a pro-American regime in Baghdad was, for at least 10 years before 2003, a top neoconservative goal, one that united both the anti-China crowd and far-right supporters of Israel's Likud. Both saw the invasion of Iraq as the prelude to an assault on neighboring Iran."
The administration still adheres to its New American Century game plan of toppling the Syrian and Iranian regimes, despite the Iraqi disaster. The "Office of Iranian Affairs," a successor of the "Office of Special Plans" that prepared the disinformation campaign leading into the Iraq War, occupies the same Pentagon offices as it predecessor and is headed by the same Machiavellian psy-ops specialist Abram Shulsky. John Dean, among others, predicts an assault on Iran next year, following the predictable failure of the UN Security Council to satisfy U.S. demands for harsh sanctions on Iran. A watered-down UNSC resolution will be cited as an international justification for preemptive action, which will blow away the Iranian leadership and produce some sort of friendly Iranian regime. Meanwhile Syria, blamed for political assassinations in Lebanon and support for "terrorist" Hizbollah will also feel Bush's terrible swift sword.
That's all impossible, many rational people say. These may include members of the Iraq Study Group, but their report---a shot across the bow of the Office of Iranian Affairs---indicates, it seems to me, some genuine alarm that the president is out to do the impossible, with more disastrous results. Surely they, and administration officials as well, are worried that an Iran attack could produce some embarrassments, like the resignations of high-level military officers. It could produce some seriously painful measures by China, which owns much of the U.S. national debt, and Russia. It would certainly intensify the already soaring anti-U.S. feelings felt throughout the world, and maybe even jeopardize the emerging alliance with aspiring superpower India. But those who brought us the Iraq War have enormous confidence in themselves and the power of their heroic will, which they think can create a whole new reality for generations to come. They feel that more aggression in Southwest Asia---even if it sows chaos, draws Iran's Revolutionary Guards into the Iraqi conflict, and generates another war between Israel and Hizbollah and its Lebanese allies---is necessary soon, under the current sympathetic president, lest the bold project be lost entirely.
Some suggest that the expansion of the war is inevitable given the internal logic of capitalist imperialism. But clearly many thoroughly invested in the system find the neocons nuts. They want to head them off before they with some of their Christian fundamentalist allies in tow produce an apocalyptic scenario. Baker, Hamilton & Co. seem to doubt that the system's best served at this point by attacking Syria and Iran, and are deliberating provoking discussion about the wisdom of the near-future, planned stages of the neocon project. If that's happening at the level of the ruling class, isn't there an even greater basis for the antiwar movement to agitate against an expanding war? The greatest deterrent of all would be Cheney's expectation that an assault on Iran might lead a politically informed American people to pour out into the streets as the attack gets underway, denouncing it, informing the world that we reject it and those who planned it and demand regime change right here.
* * * *
I've been accused of spinning a "conspiracy theory" because I connect the dots between Cheney, the neocons, the Office of Special Plans and the campaign to make war on Iraq. I'm really not a conspiracy theorist, but if I were one, I'd have to bring up the issue of Mary Cheney's pregnancy. Just bear with me.
On October 26, 1965, the Selective Service listed constraints on drafting childless married men. Cheney was then classified as 1-A , "available for service." Cheney, who had been married to his wife Lynn for fourteen months, may have been influenced by this policy change to think seriously about parenthood. Daughter Elizabeth was born nine months later on July 28, 1966. Cheney applied for and received a 3-A classification, his fifth and final draft deferment (following marriage and education deferments) during the Vietnam era when, as he has stated, he "had other priorities" than going to war.
Elizabeth, married to General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security Philip Perry, is now Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and sitting directly atop the spooky "Office of Iranian Affairs" inhabiting the Office of Special Plans' former offices in the Pentagon and headed by Machiavellian disinformation artist Abram Shulsky. (Such an irony that a child born out of a man's earnest desire to avoid the battlefield should be assigned to help him later in life rain down terror upon Iran.) Lynn's a powerful figure too, having spent seven years on Lockheed Corporation's board of directors, and serving as a "fellow" at the American Enterprise Institutute for Public Policy Research. She founded the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative group that monitors American academia and in November 2001 issued a report entitled Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It. The whole family is nasty, and Mary's being a lesbian and pregnant doesn't get her off the hook. She was public relations manager for Coors Brewing Co., for god's sakes. She was director of vice-presidential operations in the 2004 campaign. She's an AOL executive. But because she's a lesbian, and the Christian right hates lesbianism (the sin if not the sinner), she might receive sympathy from Americans who are liberal (or rational) on gay-lesbian issues. And who are also, antiwar and anti-Bush/Cheney.
So maybe Vice President Cheney, who's gotten women pregnant before to save his skin, might not have said to Mary, some months back, "Why don't you and your life partner Heather have a baby?" It makes the whole family seem so much more human, and complicated. So many have the stereotype of Cheney as the man who opposed the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa because he considered him a "terrorist" working with communists. A man who, while thoroughly callous when it comes to the well-being of South African blacks or Iraqi civilians, is filled with self-righteousness, telling the world "We don't negotiate with evil, we defeat it." A man dripping with corporate greed, ruthlessly pursuing his goals, repeating bald-faced lies every step of the way. A man actively planning an assault on Iran as we speak. But a man who supports and defends his gay daughter, expressing his own family values. Couldn't such a man, whose popularity is at rock bottom, benefit should it be known that in this Christmas season his daughter Mary is pregnant, and that he rejoices?
Cheney publicly disagrees with the president's position on gay marriage. Can you think of any other issue on which the two men publicly differ? And this isn't just any issue; it might have been the one that won the 2004 election, skillfully managed by Karl Rove. So it was significant that Bush and Cheney differed on it. Highly significant too that the president just told the press: "I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child. And I'm happy for her." That was a little risky for Bush. His hard-right Christian fundamentalist base, reeling from the revelation that yet another prominent Colorado preacher man has had a history of man-to-man sin, wasn't real pleased with it. It put Bush on record as saying, I'm not that homophobic. I'll bet he did it out of deference to Cheney, the man still calling the shots, and Cheney's family situation.
I don't think it's coincidental that the report of the "virgin birth" of the Komodo dragon in the British zoo comes out just as Mary's pregnancy hits the front pages. The Komodo dragon fertilized her own eggs; some lizards have evolved in such a way that they can do that. A female lizard can produce young without a male (and still be a good mother). A zoologist on NPR stated that by his calculations the earliest likely date for the lizards to hatch is Dec. 25.
Mary Cheney's special pregnancy. Virgin Mary's giving birth at Christmas. A lizard virgin birth on that same day. How likely is all this a coincidence?
Ok. I confess I've just playing with your mind. I don't believe Cheney encouraged Mary to get pregnant, or planted the Komodo dragon story in the press, or wants to steer the administration away from its Christian right base towards more gay-friendly stances in order to acquire a reputation for fairness and reason as it plans to attack Iran. I just believe that Cheney still shapes the cowboy mind in Washington, his violent amoral proclivities touched by ordinary family sentiments, to which he's asked the homophobic Commander-in-Chief to please attach himself. Bush's public happiness for Mary might be simultaneously a testimony that he is happy to leave the big decisions for his administration, as before, with Uncle Dick.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:24 am Post subject: The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation? |
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VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070105_surge.htm
January 05, 2007
The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation?
By Paul Craig Roberts
The New Year began on the hopeful note that Bush’s illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group’s unanimous conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld’s removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs down given by America’s top military commanders to the neoconservatives’ plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush’s Iraq policy, thus giving new meaning to "support the troops," are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.
When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the "surge option" of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an administration official "admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one." It is a clear sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order to protect his own delusions.
The American Establishment, concerned by Bush’s egregious mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him. However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.
In the January 5 issue of CounterPunch John Walsh gives a good description of the struggle between the American establishment and the neocons.
Peter Spiegel, the Pentagon correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, reported on January 4 that the neocons have used the failure of the administration’s policy in Iraq to convince Bush to launch an aggressive counterinsurgency requiring the buildup of troop levels by extending deployments beyond the agreed terms. [Old guard back on Iraq policy, January 4, 2007]
Raed Jarrar (CounterPunch, January 4) suggests that the Shi’ite militias, such as the one led by Al-Sadr, are the intended targets of the "surge option." There seems no surer way to escalate the conflict in Iraq than to attack the Shi’ite militias. For longer than the US fought Germany in WW II, 150,000 US troops in Iraq have been thwarted by a small insurgency drawn from Iraq’s minority population of Sunnis. It hardly seems feasible that 30,000 additional US troops, demoralized by extended deployment, can succeed in a surge against the Shi’ite militias when 150,000 US troops cannot succeed against the minority Sunnis.
The reason the US has not been driven out of Iraq is that the majority Shi’ites have not been part of the insurgency. The Shi’ites are attacking the Sunnis, who are forced to fight a two-front war against US troops and Shi’ite militias and death squads.
The US owes its presence in Iraq, just as the colonial powers always owed their presence in the Middle East, to the disunity of Arabs. Western domination of the Muslim world succeeded by not picking a fight with all of the disunited Arabs at the same time.
Attacking the Shi’ite militias while fighting a Sunni insurgency would violate this rule. If Bush ignores US military commanders and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional neocon allies of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, US troops will be engulfed in general insurgency. This is why General John Abizaid resigned on January 5. He wants no part of the Republican Party’s sacrifice of US soldiers to sectarian conflict.
In recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, Republican Senator John McCain, who believes in the efficacy of violence and not in diplomacy, pressed General Abizaid to request more US troops to be sent to Iraq. General Abizaid replied as follows:
"Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no."
Bush is like Hitler. He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy. Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion. In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.
By manipulating Bush and provoking a military crisis in which the US stands to lose its army in Iraq, the neoconservatives hope to revive the implementation of their plan for US conquest of the Middle East. They believe they can use fear, "honor," and the aversion of macho Americans to ignoble defeat to expand the conflict in response to military disaster.
The neocons believe that the loss of an American army would be met with the electorate’s demand for revenge. The barriers to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons.
Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz set out the plan for Middle East conquest several years ago in Commentary Magazine. It is a plan for Muslim genocide. In place of physical extermination of Muslims, Podhoretz advocates their cultural destruction by deracination. Islam is to be torn out by the roots and reduced to a purely formal shell devoid of any real beliefs.
Podhoretz disguises the neoconservative attack against diversity with contrived arguments, but its real purpose is to use the US military to subdue Arabs and to create space for Israel to expand.
Not enough Americans are aware that this is what the "war on terror" is all about. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
