| Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 11:06 pm Post subject: Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran |
| Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/040907_cheney_orders.htm
Fox News, Wall Street Journal instructed to launch PR blitz for upcoming military strike
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Dick Cheney has ordered top Neo-Con media outlets, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, to unleash a PR blitz to sell a war with Iran from today, according to Barnett Rubin, the highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University.
The New Yorker magazine reports that Rubin had a conversation with a member of a top neoconservative institution in Washington, who told him that "instructions" had been passed on from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day.
"It will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects, writes Rubin, "It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”
Rubin subsequently confirmed with a second source that the propaganda coup had been launched and the individual, another top Neo-Con at a major think tank, had this to say about it: “I am a Republican. I am a conservative. But I’m not a raging lunatic. This is lunatic.”
An organized mass media campaign to propagandize for a military strike on Iran mirrors exactly what happened in late 2002 in preparation for the invasion of Iraq and would be seen as par for the course in anticipation of an attack that presidential candidate Ron Paul amongst other expert observers fear will take place within 12 months.
President Bush met directly with talk radio idealogues at the White House last year to push the Neo-Con agenda. Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Neal Boortz and Michael Medved (pictured below) amongst others all attended and received their talking points straight from the President's mouth.
Considering the history of the sordid "fake news" scandal, where millions of dollars were used to create pre-packaged government press releases disguised as news, along with the Armstrong Williams farce, it should surprise no one that such "instructions" are now being handed out to prepare the public for another military invasion.
The issuance of orders for Neo-Con mass media arms to push for an assault on Iran also puts the U.S. on red alert for a terror attack, whether real or manufactured, which Dick Cheney has already promised will immediately be blamed on Iran no matter who the real culprits are.
On August 1st, 2005 the American Conservative reported that Cheney had tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan involved a massive air strike on Iran which included the use of nuclear weapons.
The publication reported that, "The response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States," meaning that any such attack will immediately be blamed on Iran and any evidence to the contrary will be buried.
The London Times reported on Sunday that the Pentagon had finalized plans for a 3 day blitz designed to annihilate 1,200 targets in Iran and destroy the country's military capability.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.
Rhetoric regarding a potential military attack on Iran has heated again over the past week, with President Bush having warned of the risk of a "nuclear holocaust" if the country was allowed to acquire nuclear capability.
In a speech last Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that a diplomatic push by the world's powers to rein in Tehran's nuclear program was the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad subsequently stated that a U.S. attack on Iran was "impossible" due to U.S. troops being tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yesterday, he claimed to have proof that the U.S. were not planning to attack, bizarrely citing his mathematical skills as an engineer and faith in God.
A January poll by Ipsos found that 40% of Americans thought it likely that Iran would be attacked by the end of the year. The U.S. has stationed three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, the Nimitz, a nuclear-powered carrier, John C. Stennis Strike Group, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, a relief carrier.
The U.S. government is openly funding and supporting the activities of Jundullah, a Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorist group formerly headed by the alleged mastermind of 9/11, to carry out bombings in Iran and destabilize Ahmadinejad's power base.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard military was recently declared to be a terrorist organization by the White House, another ominous sign that an attack is being readied.
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A Sept. rollout for Iran war
by David Isenberg
Washington (UPI) Sept. 5, 2007
http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Analysis/2007/09/05/outside_view_a_sept_rollout_for_iran_war/3651/
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card once famously said of the administration's 2002 campaign to get support for the invasion of Iraq, ''From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.''
Now August is behind us, and -- right on schedule -- marketers both in the White House and among their supporters outside are rolling out their newest product, a public relations blitz urging a U.S. military adventure in Iran.
Consider the recent speech by President Bush to the American Legion. In it he said, "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.
"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions.
"We will confront this danger before it is too late," he concluded.
Of course, President Bush's speech, not for the first time, stood in 180 degree contrast to reality.
The day before, while making public the recently completed agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program, Olli Heinonen, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said, "We have in front of us an agreed work plan. We agreed on modalities on how to implement it. We have a timeline for the implementation."
But however distorted their relationship to reality, Bush's words have impact.
"I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities," he said. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. military in Iraq arrested and detained eight Iranian energy experts meeting in Baghdad with the Iraqi government, handcuffing, blindfolding and interrogating them.
They were only released when the Iraqi government protested.
On Sept. 10 the American Enterprise Institute, a sort of neoconservative administration-in-waiting, will debut the newest book by its "Freedom Scholar" Michael Ledeen, one of the foremost proponents of the military adventure in Iraq.
Titled "The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction," it is a rehash of neocon arguments for "regime change" -- by military force, if necessary -- in Tehran. Although he calls for supporting and funding the regime's domestic opposition, Ledeen concludes that this "administration or the next will likely face a terrible choice: appease a nuclear Iran, or bomb it before their atomic weapons are ready to go."
Jim Lobe, the Washington bureau chief of the Inter Press Service renowned for his coverage of the neoconservative influence in the Bush administration, notes that the rollout of Ledeen's book comes just four days after AEI will launch its Sept. 6 "All or Nothing" campaign to "save the surge" in Iraq. He wrote:
"The chronological juxtaposition of the Surge panel Sept. 6 and the rollout of Ledeen's book Sept. 10 underlines the balance that AEI and other hawks (including the vice president's office) are trying to achieve between their two top priorities at the moment -- sustaining the surge well into next year and rallying Congress and the public behind an attack on Iran before the end of Bush's term, if by then "diplomacy" does not achieve the desired results of 1) freezing its nuclear program and/or 2) halting Tehran's support for its Shia allies (including the al-Maliki government) in Iraq."
Meanwhile, Kimberly Kagan, who directs the Institute for the Study of War, has written a lengthy report titled "Iran's Proxy War Against the United States and the Iraqi Government" that was posted on the Web site of neoconservative organ the Weekly Standard.
Kagan is the wife of Frederick Kagan, an AEI scholar and one of the intellectual architects of the Iraq surge. She is also listed as one of the participants in her husband's research team that came up with the idea for the surge in the first place.
Of course, there are also exceptions to the "don't do rollouts until after Labor Day" strategy.
One was at the end of July, when the State Department unveiled a series of arms sales in the region to contain Iran. In her July 30 announcement of the potential sale of $20 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the arms will "support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."
However, the exact nature of the Iranian threat or how these U.S. weapons transfers will counter it was never spelled out.
The other was in August when the Senate unanimously passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. Lieberman, I-Conn., accusing Iran of acts of war against the United States -- a resolution with no purpose other than to strengthen the case for war against Tehran.
A third was the White House decision to designate at least elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, using the president's authority under a September 2001 executive order. Robert Baer, a former high-ranking CIA field officer in the Middle East, wrote recently in Time Magazine that:
"Reports that the Bush administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: It's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months."
(David Isenberg is a senior analyst with the British American Security Information Council. He is also a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, contributor to the Straus Military Reform Project, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and a U.S. Navy veteran. The views expressed are his own.)
(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
Community
C-SPAN viewer Call for GAO head David Walker which mentioned Walt and Mearsheimer book
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2007/09/israel-lobby-and-us-foreign-policy.html
http://tinyurl.com/2KHCED
Drumbeat For Attack on Iran Grows Louder in Washington:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/1422235
Talk about a U.S. attack on Iran appears to be growing louder in Washington. There are reports that Vice President Dick Cheney's office has issued instructions to conservative think tanks to start a drumbeat for attacking Iran. On Monday the American Enterprise Institute is hosting two events related to Iran. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is giving a speech on how the war on terrorism should be viewed as a "a world war that pits civilization against terrorists and their state sponsors who wish to impose a new dark age." Later in the day former CIA director Jim Woolsey and others will meet to discuss a new book by longtime Iran hawk Michael Leeden titled "The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots" Quest for Destruction." The Heritage Foundation recently hosted an interagency Bush administration war game attempting to anticipate Iranian responses to a U.S. bombing campaign. Meanwhile the Sunday Times of London has reported the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive air strikes against twelve hundred targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days. The main source of the article was an official at another conservative Washington think tank – the Nixon Center.
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http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
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http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=516
Will Iran's Good Nuclear Report Card Slow the March to War?
BY RUSS WELLEN
09.04.2007 | POLITICS
Even though Mohamed ElBaradei is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he's not resting on his laurels. Continuing in his role as the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he handed in his report on Iran's nuclear program to the IAEA's Board of Governors yesterday.
Reuters got a hold of a copy and summed it up: "Iran's uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is far from producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts." A passing grade, in other words.
"'Iran made a fast start but then there was a leveling off,' said a senior U.N. official versed in the IAEA's findings. 'We don't know the reasons, but the slow pace continues.'"
Admittedly, it's difficult to believe that, 60 years after the discovery of nuclear power, a nation as resourceful as Iran is still stumbling around trying to replicate the process. But once the nuclear black market of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan was knocked out of commission, nuclear expertise, equipment and material have been hard to come by.
Reuters concludes, "The report's detail on new Iranian cooperation with inspectors and Tehran's lack of significant enrichment progress are likely to blunt Washington's push for painful sanctions."
Who's kidding whom? The administration has no more interest in further sanctions on Iran than it did in obtaining the UN Security Council's go-ahead for an attack on Iraq. In fact, not only does it have its sites trained on Iran, it's locked and loaded.
Some prep work remains to be done, however, before it pulls the trigger and the Neocon media machine and think tanks are only too happy to oblige. For example, Neocon firebrand Michael Ledeen's new book, "The Iranian Time Bomb," is coming out soon. But –- and file this under "bet you didn't know this" -- an attack on Iran is contingent on winning support for the surge. On Tuesday, the Inter Press Service's Jim Lobe wrote of the Neocons:
"To their dismay, they have been forced to spend far more time, effort, and, above all, ink, on defending the Surge over the past eight months than on laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran. . . . If it becomes clear by late September or early October that Democrats and uneasy Republicans will indeed acquiesce in the continuation of the Surge. . . I think it's very likely we will see a much bigger focus by. . . the neo-cons, as well as their allies within the administration, on Iran." [Emphasis added]
As Lobe reported in an earlier post, Neocon think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, "which contributed so much to the propaganda and planning for the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, appears set to launch its 'Defend-the-Surge' campaign in the run-up to. . . the Petraeus-Crocker report."
In fact, Beltway rumors indicate that the "rollout" will start after Labor Day with its crescendo timed for -- when else -- September 11.
The administration must have known the IAEA report was coming, because, as if to counter its effects, Bush ratcheted up the nuke talk in a speech before an American Legion group on Tuesday. "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons," he said, "threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."
Also, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom the blogosphere can't resist calling his French poodle, has labeled Iran's nuclear program as "undoubtedly the most serious crisis before us today." His people even supplied him with a slogan for the occasion: "The Iranian bomb, or the bombing of Iran." Catchy!
Still, one would think the findings of one of the world's most important international agencies counts for something, especially since it's not led by some UN functionary, but by a Nobel Peace Prize winner. (On second thought, after the way Jimmy Carter was eviscerated upon demonstrating support for Palestine, maybe not.)
The work of the IAEA, however, may be undermined by a source far more credible than the administration, the Neocons and the right-wing choir. Yesterday Jeff Lindemyer at the nuke-watchdog site Nukes of Hazard reported that: "The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) released yesterday an insightful report that paints a disturbing picture of how well [by which they mean not very –- Ed.] the IAEA is doing in keeping tabs on nuclear material and that the situation is actually primed to get worse."
The report, "Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom," concludes that "the IAEA is already falling behind in achieving its (nuclear) material accountancy mission and risks slipping further," writes Lindemyer, unless remedial actions are taken. One of the IAEA's problems, of course, is that it "has far too little money to safeguard against a seemingly ever growing amount of weapons-grade material."
By nature, the administration is, of course, disinclined to pay attention to not only international agencies, but reports from outside its circle (like the Iraq Study Group). Will it make an exception for the NPEC report in order to undermine the credibility of the IAEA and the passing grades it gave Iran?
Of course, the fallacy of any charges Bush & Co. make against the IAEA, is that foremost among those who under-fund it are the United States.
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Author Stephen Walt Takes On 'The Israel Lobby':
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14154082
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From: "Ed Corrigan"
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:03:13 -0400
Subject: Review of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book on the Israel Lobby: "Iraq, Israel, Iran - Huffington Post, By David Bromwich Posted September 4, 2007
Here is another review of Mearsheimer and Walt's book on the Israel lobby. It makes an number of excellent points.
Ed Corrigan
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/iraq-israel-iran_b_62995.html
Iraq, Israel, Iran - Huffington Post
David Bromwich Posted September 4, 2007
When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article on
the Israel Lobby appeared in the London Review of
Books, after having been commissioned and killed by
the Atlantic Monthly, neoconservative publicists
launched an all-out campaign to slander the authors as
anti-Semites. Now that their book The Israel Lobby and
U.S. Foreign Policy has appeared--a work of
considerable scope, carefully documented, and not just
an expanded version of the article--the imputation of
anti-Semitism will doubtless be repeated more
sparingly for readers lower down the educational
ladder. Meanwhile, the literate establishment press
will (a) ignore it, (b) pretend that it says nothing
new or surprising, and (c) rule out the probable
inferences from the data, on the ground that the very
meaning of the word "lobby" is elusive.
The truth is that many new facts are in this book, and
many surprising facts. By reconstructing a trail of
meetings and public statements in 2001-2002, for
example, the authors show that much of the leadership
of Israel was puzzled at first by the boyish
enthusiasm for a war on Iraq among their
neoconservative allies. Why Iraq? they asked. Why now?
They would appear to have obtained assurances,
however, that once the "regime change" in Iraq was
accomplished, the next war would be against Iran.
A notable pilgrimage followed. One by one they lined
up, Netanyahu, Sharon, Peres, and Barak, writing
op-eds and issuing flaming warnings to convince
Americans that Saddam Hussein was a menace of
world-historical magnitude. Suddenly the message was
that any delay of the president's plan to bomb,
invade, and occupy Iraq would be seized on by "the
terrorists" as a sign of weakness. Regarding the
correct treatment of terrorists, as also regarding the
avoidance of weakness, Americans look to Israelis as
mentors in a class by themselves.
So a war projected years before by Richard Perle and
Paul Wolfowitz--a war secured at last by the fixing of
the facts around the policy at the Office of the Vice
President--was allowed to borrow some prestige at an
intermediate stage by the consent of a few
well-regarded Israeli politicians. Yet their target of
choice had been Iran. They accepted the change of
sequence without outward signs of doubt, possibly
owing to their acquaintance with the Middle East
doctrine espoused by the Weekly Standard and the
American Enterprise Institute--a doctrine which held
that to create a viable order after the fall of Iraq,
regime change in Iran and Syria would have to follow
expeditiously.
To sum up this part: the evidence of Mearsheimer and
Walt suggests that Israel was never the prime mover of
the Iraq war. Rather, once the Cheney-Wolfowitz design
was in place, the Israeli ministers who trooped
through American opinion pages and news-talk shows did
what they could to heat up the war fever. This war was
on the cards before they threw in their lot with
Cheney and Bush; by their efforts they merely helped
to confer on the plan an aura of legitimacy and
worldly wisdom.
But now the American war with Iran they originally
wanted is coming closer. Last Tuesday, when the mass
media were crammed to distraction with the behavior of
a senator in an airport washroom, few could be
troubled to notice an important speech by President
Bush. If Iran is allowed to persist in its present
state, the president told the American Legion
convention in Reno, it threatens "to put a region
already known for instability and violence under the
shadow of a nuclear holocaust." He said he had no
intention of allowing that; and so he has "authorized
our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's
murderous activities." Those words come close to
saying not that a war is coming but that it is already
here. No lawmaker who reads them can affect the
slightest shock at any action the president takes
against Iran.
Admittedly, it was a showdown speech, reckless and
belligerent, to a soldier audience; but then, this has
been just the sort of crowd and message that Cheney
and Bush favor when they are about to open a new round
of killings. And in a sense, the Senate had given the
president his cue when it approved, by a vote of 97-0,
the July 11 Lieberman Amendment to Confront Iran. It
is hardly an accident that the president and his
favorite tame senator concurred in their choice of the
word "confront." The pretext for the Lieberman
amendment, as for the president's order, was the
discovery of caches of weapons alleged to belong to
Iran, the capture of Iranian advisers said to be
operating against American troops, and the assertion
that the most deadly IEDs used against Americans are
often traceable to Iranian sources--claims that have
been widely treated in the press as possible, but
suspect and unverified. Still, the vote was 97-0. If
few Americans took notice, the government of Iran
surely did.
That unanimous vote was the latest in a series of
capitulations that has included the apparent end of
resistance by Nancy Pelosi to the next war. After the
election of 2006, the speaker of the house declared
her intention to enact into law a requirement that
this president seek separate authorization for a war
against Iran. On the point of doing so, she addressed
the AIPAC convention, and was booed for criticizing
the escalation of the Iraq war. Pelosi took the hint,
shelved her authorization plan, and went with AIPAC
against the anti-war base of the Democratic party.
This much, one might know without the help of
Mearsheimer and Walt. But without their record, how
many would trace the connection between the removal of
Philip Zelikow as policy counselor of the state
department, at the end of 2006, and a speech Zelikow
had given in September 2006 urging serious negotiation
and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine? The
ousting of Zelikow was a blessing to the war party,
since it freed them from a skeptical confidant of
Secretary of State Rice--perhaps the only person of
stature anywhere near the administration whom she
treated as an ally and friend. And the meaning of the
change was clear when Zelikow's replacement turned out
to be Eliot Cohen: a neoconservative war scholar and
enthusiast, an early booster of the "surge" on the
pundit shows, and incidentally a shameless slanderer
of Mearsheimer- Walt ("Yes, It's Anti-Semitic, "
Washington Post, April 5, 2006).
>From Zelikow to Cohen was only a step on the long path
of humiliation that now stretched before Condoleeza
Rice. When, in March 2007, amid suggestions of a
renewal of diplomacy, she intimated that talks might
be helpful in dealing with the Hamas-Fatah unity
government (whose formation the Arab world had greeted
as offering a promise of peace), she was demolished by
an AIPAC-backed advisory letter bearing the signatures
of 79 senators, which directed her not to speak with a
government that had not yet recognized Israel. From
that moment Rice was effectively neutralized.
The hottest cries for another war have been coming
this summer from Joe Lieberman. He has called for
attacks on Iran, and for attacks on Syria. It is as if
Lieberman, with his appetite for multiple theaters of
conflict, spoke from the congealed memory of all the
wars he never fought. But Joe Lieberman is a
stalking-horse. He would not say these things without
getting permission from Vice President Cheney, a close
and admired friend. Nor would Cheney permit a
high-profile lawmaker whom he partly controls to set
the United States and Israel on so perilous a course
unless he had ascertained its acceptability to Ehud
Olmert.
Yet the chief orchestrater of the second
neoconservative war of aggression is Elliott Abrams.
Convicted for deceptions around Iran-Contra, as Lewis
Libby was convicted for deceptions stemming from
Iraq--and pardoned by the elder Bush just as Libby had
his sentence commuted by the younger--Abrams now
presides over the Middle East desk at the National
Security Council. All of the wildness of this
astonishing functionary and all his reckless love of
subversion will be required to pump up the "imminent
danger" of Iran. For here, as with Iraq, the danger
can only be made to look imminent by manipulation and
forgery. On all sober estimates, Iran is several
months from mastering the nuclear cycle, and several
years from producing a weapon. Whereas Israel for
decades has been in possession of a substantial
nuclear arsenal.
How mad is Elliott Abrams? If one passage cited by
Mearsheimer- Walt is quoted accurately, it would seem
to be the duty of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee to subject Abrams to as exacting a challenge
as the Senate Judiciary Committee brought to Alberto
Gonzales. The man at the Middle East desk of the
National Security Council wrote in 1997 in his book
Faith or Fear: "there can be no doubt that Jews,
faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are
to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It
is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart--except
in Israel--from the rest of the population." When he
wrote those words, Abrams probably did not expect to
serve in another American administration. He certainly
did not expect to occupy a position that would require
him to weigh the national interest of Israel, the
country with which he confessed himself uniquely at
one, alongside the national interest of a country in
which he felt himself to stand "apart...from the rest
of the population." Now that he is calling the shots
against Hamas and Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran, his
words of 1997 ought to alarm us into reflection.
Among many possible lines of inquiry, the senators
might begin by recognizing that the United States has
other allies in Asia besides Israel. One of those
allies is India; and there is a further point of
resemblance. In a distinct exception to our
anti-proliferation policy, we have allowed India to
develop nuclear weapons; just as, in an earlier such
exception, we allowed Israel to do the same. But
suppose we read tomorrow a statement by the director
of the South Asia desk of the National Security
Council which declared: "There can be no doubt that
Hindus are to stand apart from any nation in which
they live. It is the very nature of being Hindu to be
apart--except in India--from the rest of the
population." Suppose, further, we knew this man still
held these beliefs at a time of maximum tension
between India and Pakistan; and that he had recently
channeled 86 million dollars to regional gangs and
militias bent on increasing the tension. Would we not
conclude that something in our counsels of state had
gone seriously out of joint?
The Mearsheimer- Walt study of American policy deserves
to be widely read and discussed. It could not be more
timely. If the speeches and saber-rattling by the
president, the ambassador to Iraq, and several army
officers mean anything, they mean that Cheney and
Abrams are preparing to do to Iran what Cheney and
Wolfowitz did to Iraq. They are gunning for an
incident. They are working against some resistance
from the armed forces but none from the opposition
party at home. The president has ordered American
troops to confront Iran. Sarkozy has fallen into line,
Brown and Merkel are silent, and outside the United
States only Mohammed ElBaradei of the International
Atomic Energy Agency stands between the war party and
a prefabricated justification for a war that would
extend across a vast subcontinent. Unless some
opposition can rouse itself, we are poised to descend
with non-partisan compliance into a moral and
political disaster that will dwarf anything America
has seen.
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Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran
When Wishful Thinking Replaces Resistance
http://counterpunch.org/bricmont09042007.html
By JEAN BRICMONT
Many people in the antiwar movement try to reassure themselves: Bush cannot possibly attack Iran. He does not have the means to do so, or, perhaps, even he is not foolish enough to engage in such an enterprise. Various particular reasons are put forward, such as: If he attacks, the Shiites in Iraq will cut the US supply lines. If he attacks, the Iranians will block the Straits of Ormuz or will unleash dormant terrorist networks worldwide. Russia won't allow such an attack. China won't allow it -- they will dump the dollar. The Arab world will explode.
All this is doubtful. The Shiites in Iraq are not simply obedient to Iran. If they don't rise against the United States when their own country is occupied (or if don't rise very systematically), they are not likely to rise against the US if a neighboring country is attacked. As for blocking the Straits or unleashing terrorism, this will just be another justification for more bombing of Iran. After all, a main casus belli against Iran is, incredibly, that it supposedly helps the resistance against U.S. troops in Iraq, as if those troops were at home there. If that can work as an argument for bombing Iran, then any counter-measure that Iran might take will simply "justify" more bombing, possibly nuclear. Iran is strong in the sense that it cannot be invaded, but there is little it can do against long range bombing, accompanied by nuclear threats.
Russia will escalate its military buildup (which now lags far behind the U.S. one), but it can't do anything else, and Washington will be only too glad to use the Russian reaction as an argument for boosting its own military forces. China is solely concerned with its own development and won't drop the dollar for non-economic reasons. Most Arab governments, if not their populations, will look favorably on seeing the Iranian shiite leadership humiliated. Those governments have sufficient police forces to control any popular opposition-- after all, that is what they managed to do after the attack on Iraq.
With the replacement of Chirac by Sarkozy, and the near-complete elimination of what was left of the Gaullists (basically through lawsuits on rather trivial matters), France has been changed from the most independent European country to the most poodlish (this was in fact the main issue in the recent presidential election, but it was never even mentioned during the campaign). In France, moreover, the secular "left" is, in the main, gung-ho against Iran for the usual reasons (women, religion). There will be no large-scale demonstrations in France either before or after the bombing. And, without French support, Germany--where the war is probably very unpopular -- can always be silenced with memories of the Holocaust, so that no significant opposition to the war will come from Europe (except possibly from its Muslim population, which will be one more argument to prove that they are "backward", "extremist", and enemies of our "democratic civilization").
All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized because it is not nice to women, to gays, or to Jews. That in itself is enough to neutralize a large part of the American "left". The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not according to our views -- but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none; but the dominant ideology of human rights has legitimized, specially in the left, the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds anywhere, at any time, and that ideology has succeeded in totally sidetracking the minor issue of international law.
Israel and its fanatical American supporters want Iran attacked for its political crimes--supporting the rights of the Palestinians, or questioning the Holocaust. Both U.S. political parties are equally under the control of the Israel lobby, and so are the media. The antiwar movement is far too preoccupied with the security of Israel to seriously defend Iran and it won't attack the real architects of this coming war--the Zionists-- for fear of "provoking antisemitism". Blaming Big Oil for the Iraq war was quite debatable, but, in the case of Iran, since the country is about to be bombed but not invaded, there is no reason whatsoever to think that Big Oil wants the war, as opposed to the Zionists. In fact, Big Oil is probably very much opposed to the war, but it is as unable to stop it as the rest of us.
As far as Israel is concerned, the United States is a de facto totalitarian society--no articulate opposition is acceptable. The U.S. Congress passes one pro-Israel or anti-Iran resolution after another with "Stalinist" majorities. The population does not seem to care. But if they did, but what could they do? Vote? The electoral system is extremely biased against the emergence of a third party and the two big parties are equally under Zionist influence.
The only thing that might stop the war would be for Americans themselves to threaten their own government with massive civil disobedience. But that is not going to happen. A large part of the academic left long ago gave up informing the general public about the real world in order to debate whether Capital is a Signifier or a Signified, or worry about their Bodies and their Selves, while preachers tell their flocks to rejoice at each new sign that the end of the world is nigh. Children in Iran won't sleep at night, but the liberal American intelligentsia will lecture the ROW (rest of the world) about Human Rights. In fact, the prevalence of the "reassuring arguments" cited above proves that the antiwar movement is clinically dead. If it weren't, it would rely on its own forces to stop war, not speculate on how others might do the job.
Meanwhile, an enormous amount of hatred will have been spewed upon the world. But in the short term, it may look like a big Western "victory", just like the creation of Israel in 1948; just like the overthrow of Mossadegh by the CIA in 1953; just like the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine seemed to be a big German victory after the French defeat at Sedan in 1870. The Bush administration will long be gone when the disastrous consequences of that war will be felt.
PS: This text is not meant to be a prophecy, but a call to (urgent) action. I'll be more than happy if facts prove me wrong.
Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press. He can be reached at bricmont@fyma.ucl.ac.be.
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The author is Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, who was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He spent seven years in the Middle East and reported frequently from Iran. His latest book is "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."
The Next Quagmire
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com
Monday 03 September 2007
The most effective diplomats, like the most effective intelligence officers and foreign correspondents, possess empathy. They have the intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the heads of those they must analyze or cover. They know the vast array of historical, religious, economic and cultural antecedents that go into making up decisions and reactions. And because of this - endowed with the ability to communicate and more able to find ways of resolving conflicts through diplomacy - they are less prone to blunders.
But we live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn't worked well in Iraq. It hasn't worked well in Afghanistan. And it won't work in Iran. But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls.
To make rational decisions in international relations we must perceive how others see us. We must grasp how they think about us and be sensitive to their fears and insecurities. But this is becoming hard to accomplish. Our embassies are packed with analysts whose main attribute is long service in the armed forces and who frequently report to intelligence agencies rather than the State Department. Our area specialists in the State Department are ignored by the ideologues driving foreign policy. Their complex view of the world is an inconvenience. And foreign correspondents are an endangered species, along with foreign coverage.
We speak to the rest of the globe in the language of violence. The proposed multibillion- dollar arms supply package for the Persian Gulf countries is the newest form of weapons-systems- as-message. U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns was rather blunt about the deal. He told the International Herald Tribune that the arms package "says to the Iranians and Syrians that the United States is the major power in the Middle East and will continue to be and is not going away."
The arrogant call for U.S. hegemony over the rest of the globe is making enemies of a lot of people who might be predisposed to support us, even in the Middle East. And it is terrifying those, such as the Iraqis, Iranians and Syrians, whom we have demonized. Empathy and knowledge, the qualities that make real communication possible, have been discarded. We use tough talk and big weapons deals to communicate. We spread fear, distrust and violence. And we expect missile systems to protect us.
"Imagine an Iranian government that was powerful, radical, and in possession of nuclear weapons; imagine the threat that would pose to Israel and to the American-led balance of power, which has been so important in the Middle East since the close of the Second World War," Burns said in a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston last April 11. "That is our first challenge."
"Our second challenge is that Iran continues to be the central banker of Middle East terrorism," he went on. "It is the leading funder and director of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine general command. Third, Iran is in our judgment a major violator of the human rights of its own people; it denies religious, political, and press rights to the people of a very great country representing a very great civilization. And so we see a problem that is going to be with us for a long time, and we are trying to fashion a strategy that will work for the long term."
George W. Bush's latest salvo, on Aug. 28, was more of the same.
"Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust," he said. Bush warned that the United States and its allies would confront Iran "before it is too late."
These kinds of words, pouring out of the administration, send a clear message to any Iranian: You are in trouble. Bend to our will or we destroy you. These were the same words, with a few minor changes, that the Bush administration delivered to Saddam Hussein, who, despite numerous compromises, including letting the U.N. inspectors back into his country, was overthrown and put to death during a U.S. occupation.
And the Iranians know that without the bomb, which no intelligence agency thinks they can produce for a few years, they are now probably going to be attacked.
The Pentagon has reportedly drawn up plans for a series of airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. The air attacks are designed to cripple the Iranians' military capability in three days. The Bushehr nuclear power plant, along with targets in Saghand and Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy-water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, and the uranium conversion facility and nuclear technology center in Isfahan, will all probably be struck by the United States and perhaps even Israeli warplanes. The Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope production facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, and the Kalaye Electric Co. in the Tehran suburbs will also most likely come under attack.
But then what? We don't have the troops to invade. And we don't have anyone minding the helm who knows the slightest thing about Persian culture or the Middle East. There is no one in power in Washington with the empathy to get it. We will lurch blindly into a catastrophe of our own creation.
It is not hard to imagine what will happen. Iranian Shabab-3 and Shabab-4 missiles, which cannot reach the United States, will be launched at Israel, as well as American military bases and the Green Zone in Baghdad. Expect massive American casualties, especially in Iraq, where Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies will be able to call in precise coordinates. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, will be shut down. Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines and coastal artillery will target U.S. shipping, along with Saudi oil production and oil export centers. Oil prices will skyrocket to well over $4 a gallon. The dollar will tumble against the euro. Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, interpreting the war as an attack on all Shiites, will fire rockets into northern Israel. Israel, already struck by missiles from Tehran, will begin retaliatory raids on Lebanon and Iran. Pakistan, with a huge Shiite minority, will reach greater levels of instability. The unrest could result in the overthrow of the weakened American ally President Pervez Musharraf and usher into power Islamic radicals. Pakistan could become the first radical Islamic state to possess a nuclear weapon. The neat little war with Iran, which few Democrats oppose, has the potential to ignite a regional inferno.
We have rendered the nation deaf and dumb. We no longer have the capacity for empathy. We prefer to amuse ourselves with trivia and gossip that pass for news rather than understand. We are blinded by our military prowess. We believe that huge explosions and death are an effective form of communication. And the rest of the world is learning to speak our language.
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Former Israeli officer directing key U.S. Air Force office
Checkmate’s Dr. Lani Kass is heading a new office directing operations across the entire electro-magnetic spectrum. It seemed rather odd that Kass, a former Israeli military officer, now holds a key Air Force position, particularly after repeated concerns over her nation’s intelligence operations to acquire US national security secrets.
http://www.ericmargolis.com/
August 27, 2007
AT THE PENTAGON
Eric Margolis
WASHINGTON DC - I was invited last week to the Pentagon to brief the US Air Force’s Strategic studies group – known as `Checkmate’ – on the Mideast and Southwest Asia.
The last time I was in the Pentagon was during my army service in 1968, when I participated in command briefings for the Chiefs of Staff. For this edifice’s 23,000 military and civilian personnel the Chiefs are like Valhalla’s gods. In the Pentagon’s 17 miles of corridors, I half expected to see some lost WWII officers still looking for an exit.
`Checkmate,’ planner of the crushing 1991 US air campaign against Iraq, is an interesting outfit. Recently updated, its brainy commander, Brig Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem, reports directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff, four-star general Michael Moseley, who sits on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and advises the president.
`Stutz,’ as he is known, is likely destined for senior command. He and his staff of majors and colonels are highly educated, smart, and have open, seeking minds that are often too rare in the stultified, bureaucratic military.
The US Air Force has always been the most progressive, forward-thinking of the services. Among `Checkmate’s’ jobs are innovative strategy, thinking ahead, and evaluating different strategic viewpoints. The last point is important, because all militaries tend to become victims of group-think. The forward-thinking US Air Force is trying to breathe fresh air into the often stale confines of the Pentagon.
I presented my views on developments in the Arab World, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan in an off the record seminar to a group of officers who were clearly up to date on the subject matter. They knew the Muslim World was headed for serious change and were clearly seeking answers on how to deal with the political and demographic earthquakes that are coming.
The USAF recently added cyberspace to its missions. Checkmate’s Dr. Lani Kass is heading a new office directing operations across the entire electro-magnetic spectrum. It seemed rather odd that Kass, a former Israeli military officer, now holds a key Air Force position, particularly after repeated concerns over her nation’s intelligence operations to acquire US national security secrets.
Kass and `Stutz’ also spend a lot of time trying to implement Gen. Moseley’s campaign to renew the `warrior spirit’ in the Air Force’s specialized `target and equipment-fixated’ officers.
This is the curse of specialized high technology. I saw the same phenomena during my own military service in the Vietnam era. Senior US Army officers had become so specialized in technical fields that they had never learned the basics of war: military history, strategy, tactics. So I organized and taught seminars for colonels and generals on just these topics. `Now general,’ lectured 26-year old me, `let me explain how a pincer attack works.’
The USAF is fizzing with new ideas, but it is also not happy. The US Army and Marines are getting most of America’s sympathy and support for their role in Iraq. The Air Force, without which these wars could not be waged, and which provides decisive, 24/7 top cover for the troops with almost instant response, gets far too little credit. In fact, its decisive role is barely seen except when the rare aircraft crashes or is shot down by enemy ground fire.
Ironically, the USAF is a victim of its own success. No US ground troops have been attacked by enemy aircraft since 1953. The USAF has no enemies because it has shot them all down.
America’s air force fights so efficiently and seemingly effortlessly that neither the US Congress nor public understand the enormous logistic, manpower, financial and technological efforts required to keep it dominating the globe’s skies, space, and cyberspace.
The over-stretched USAF has been in non-stop combat for the past 17 years. Its aircraft are getting dangerously old. B-52 heavy bombers are now in their 50’s. One B-52 pilot I met, knick- named `Boomer,’ must have been near half his bomber’s age. Many tanker aircraft date to 1957. Many fighter aircraft are 24-years old. Non-stop operations over Iraq and Afghanistan are rapidly wearing out aircraft and men.
Meanwhile, war against Iran is looming. Interestingly, a senior Pentagon source insisted `the decision to attack Iran has not been made;’ and an attack is `unlikely.’ But many signs suggest the opposite.
Official Washington is often accused of not knowing what’s going on abroad. But there are many smart people in the Pentagon, CIA and State who do know. The problem – and tragedy - is their masters in the White House and Congress are just not listening.
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http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2348741.ece
From The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
By John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
Reviewed by Max Hastings
Five years ago, Atlantic Monthly commissioned two academics, John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard, to write a significant article about the influence of the Israeli lobby on American foreign policy. When the piece was at last completed, the magazine declined to publish, deeming it too hot for delicate American palates. It eventually appeared in 2005, in the London Review of Books, provoking one of the most bitter media and academic rows of recent times. The authors were accused of antisemitism, and attacked with stunning venom by some prominent US commentators. Mearsheimer and Walt obviously like a fight, however, for they have now expanded their thesis into a book.
Its argument is readily summarised. The authors support Israel’s right to exist. But they are dismayed by America’s unconditional support for its governments’ policies, including vast sums of cash aid for which there is no plausible accounting process. They reject the view articulated as a mantra by all modern American presidents (and 2008 presidential candidates) that Israel and America share common values, and their national interests march hand in hand.
On the contrary, say the authors, America’s backing for Israel does grave damage to its own foreign-policy interests. And many Israeli government actions, including the expansion of West Bank settlements and the invasion of Lebanon, reflect repressive policies that do not deserve Washington’s endorsement: “While there is no question that the Jews were victims in Europe, they were often the victimisers, not the victims, in the Middle East, and their main victims were and continue to be the Palestinians.”
The authors argue that American policy towards Israel is decisively and
They quote the experience of a Senate candidate who was invited to visit AIPAC early in his campaign for “discussions”. Harry Lonsdale described what followed as “an experience I will never forget. It wasn’t enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually, I was told what my opinion must be . . . Shortly after that . . . I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel . . . that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called; they gave from Florida to Alaska”.
When congresswoman Betty McCollum, a liberal with a solid pro-Israel voting record, opposed the AIPAC-backed Palestinian AntiTerrorism Act, which was also opposed by the state department, an AIPAC lobbyist told McCollum’s chief-of-staff that her “support for terrorists will not be tolerated”. Former president Jimmy Carter incurred not merely criticism but vilification when he published a book entitled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, likening Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians to that of the old white regime in South Africa towards its black majority.
Whatever view Europeans take of Israel, most find it difficult to comprehend the sheer ferocity of American sentiment. Ian Buruma wrote an article for The New York Times entitled How to Talk About Israel. He said how difficult it is to have an honest debate, and remarked that “even legitimate criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, is often quickly denounced as antiSemitism by various watchdogs”.
Such remarks brought down a storm on his head. The editor of The Jerusalem Post, also a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, published an open letter to Buruma that began: “Are you a Jew?” He argued that nonJews should discuss these issues only in terms acceptable to Jews.
The American media, claim the authors, even such mighty organs as The New York Times and The Washington Post, do less than justice to the Palestinians, much more than justice to the Israelis. Robert Bartley, a former editor of The Wall Street Journal, once said: “Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me.” There is no American counterpart to such notably Arabist British polemicists as Robert Fisk.
Mearsheimer and Walt’s book argues its points at such ponderous length that it makes pretty leaden reading. But it is extraordinary that, in a free society, the legitimacy of the expression of their opinions should be called into question. “We show,” say the authors, “that although Israel may have been an asset during the cold war it is increasingly a strategic liability now that the cold war is over. Backing Israel so strongly helps fuel America’s terrorism problem and makes it harder for the United States to address the other problems it faces in the Middle East.”
Americans ring-fence Israel from the normal sceptical proc-esses of democracy, while arguments for the Palestinians are often denounced as pernicious as well as antisemitic. All the 2008 presidential candidates, say Mearsheimer and Walt, know that their campaign would be dead in the water if they hinted that Israel would receive less than 100% backing if they win. They note that many Israelis are much bolder in attacking their own governments than any American politician would dare to be.
Part of the trouble is that AIPAC faces no significant opposition. Palestinians, and indeed all Arabs, command negligible sympathy in America, especially since 9/11. The authors think that the most helpful step towards diminishing the Israel lobby’s grip would be for election campaigns to be publicly financed, ending candidates’ dependence on private contributions: “AIPAC’s success is due in large part to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who do not.”
But the authors know reform will not happen. The Israel lobby is vastly strengthened by the support of America’s Christian Zionists, an important element of George W Bush’s constituency. Some may think these people are lunatics, but there are an awful lot of them. They are even more strident in their opposition to Arab rights in Palestine than the Israeli Likud party.
Mearsheimer and Walt conclude, weakly but inevitably, with a mere plea for more open debate in the US about Israel. “Because most Americans are only dimly aware of the crimes committed against the Palestinians,” they say, “they see their continued resistance as an irrational desire for vengeance. Or as evidence of unwarranted hatred of Jews akin to the antisemitism that was endemic in old Europe.
“Although we deplore the Palestinians’ reliance on terrorism and are well aware of their own contribution to prolonging the conflict, we believe their grievances are genuine and must be addressed. We also believe that most Americans would support a different approach . . . if they had a more accurate understanding of past events and present conditions.”
For Europeans, all this adds up to a bleak picture. Only America might be capable of inducing the government of Israel to moderate its behaviour, and it will not try. Washington gives Jerusalem a blank cheque, and all of us in some degree pay a price for Israel’s abuses of it.
After that remark, I shall be pleasantly surprised to escape an allegation from somebody that I belong in the same stable of antisemites as Walt and Mearsheimer. Yet otherwise intelligent Americans diminish themselves by hurling charges of antisemitism with such recklessness. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the United States faces its responsibilities there in a much more convincing fashion than it does today, partly for reasons given in this depressing book.
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
Allen Lane £25 pp496
Buy the book here at the offer price of £22.50 (inc p&p)
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Just saw the following posted at www.whatreallyhappened.com
New book challenges US support for Israel
NEW YORK: An upcoming book challenging whether diplomatic and military support for Israel is in the best interests of the United States is set to spark fresh debate on Washington’s role in the Middle East.
“The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” written by two of the United States’ most influential political science professors, is set to hit the bookshelves next Tuesday and promises to break the taboo on the subject. Written by John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt from Harvard, the book follows an article they published last year that stirred impassioned debate by setting out a similar position.
Their thesis is that US endorsement of Israel is not fully explained by strategic or moral reasons, but by the pressure exerted by Jewish lobbyists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-conservatives with Zionist sympathies.
The result, according to the book, is an unbalanced US foreign policy in the Middle East, the US invasion of Iraq, the threat of war with Iran or Syria and a fragile security situation for the entire Western world. “Israel is not the strategic asset to the United States that many claim. Israel may have been a strategic asset during the Cold War, but it has become a growing liability now that the Cold War is over,” the authors said.
“Unconditional support for Israel has reinforced anti-Americanism around the world, helped fuel America’s terrorism problem, and strained relations with other key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” they added.
According to the two writers, “backing Israel’s harsh treatment of the Palestinians has reinforced Anti-Americanism around the world and almost certainly helped terrorists recruit new followers.”
Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, described the book as “an insidious, biased account of the Arab-Israeli conflict and of the role of supporters of Israel in the US,” in an interview with AFP.
“Everything about American policy toward the conflict is presented in exaggerated form, as if America is completely one-sided in support of Israel and that those policies are simply the product of the Israel lobby.” He is countering Mearsheimer and Walt’s book with his own title: “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control,” due out on the same day.
Mearsheimer and Walt highlight the three billion dollars in US economic and military aid that Israel receives every year - more than any other country. They also point to Washington’s diplomatic support: between 1972 and 2006, the United States vetoed 42 United Nations Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, while watering down many others under threat of veto. Foxman counters that the special relationship works both ways and that the United States has gained much out of its ally.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs canceled a public debate on the issue planned for September and featuring Mearsheimer and Walt when they were unable to schedule a time that Foxman could also manage.
In the conclusion of their book, Mearsheimer and Walt say that the United States must change its policy towards Israel. “The United States would be a better ally if its leaders could make support for Israel more conditional and if they could give their Israeli counterparts more candid advice without facing a backlash from the Israel lobby.” With just over a year until the 2008 US presidential election, however, they said the issue was unlikely to even enter the debate. afp
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Walt & Mearsheimer's Proof That 'Tail Wagged the Dog' Points American Jews to a Universalist Ethos:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/09/more-on-walt-me.html
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The Lobby Strikes
Posted by Justin Raimondo on August 27, 2007
The publication of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a book-length version of the now-famous essay by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, is—naturally!—an occasion for the Lobby to go into high gear, and the intimidation tactics are already well along. Mearsheimer and Wa | |
