| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2008 9:05 pm Post subject: Obama and the Neocon Middle East War Agenda |
| Obama and the Neocon Middle East War Agenda
Sunday, December 7, 2008
From: "Stephen Sniegoski"
To: "Sniegoski, Stephen"
Friends,
Many Americans, in fact, many people in the world are under the impression that Obama's policies will be the antithesis of those of the Bush administration. But his recent appointees would tend to bring forth the opposite question: To what extent is Obama a neocon? Well, he is not a 100 percenter like McCain. But he is oriented in that direction, as illustrated by the people he has selected.
While only a very few neocons such as Ken Adelman backed Obama before the election, many neoconservatives are now elated by his picks. As neocon Max Boot writes: ?I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments , most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain.? Almost as euphoric is David Brooks: ?Believe me, I?m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He?s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.? "I'm relieved,? Richard Perle commented, ?Contrary to expectations, I don't think we would see a lot of change." Neocon Mona Charen opines: ?Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Obama's appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I'm almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell.?
http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2008/12/02/pinch_me,_am_i_dreaming
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Journalist Robert Dreyfuss observes [ http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13847 ] that an Obama administration probably won?t be like the neocons on Iraq?and will remove combat troops over time (well, maybe)---and will not spout the bellicose rhetoric of the Bush administration. And there will be more cooperation with the international community. However, the central issue of the neocons and Israel today is Iran. And, on Iran, there is a very hawkish tinge to his administration. Remember, how Hillary talked about destroying Iran if it attacked Israel. Dreyfuss writes: ?When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama ? including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton ? have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.? Dreyfuss shows that these individuals have continued to be close to the neocons. He writes ?Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree ? and, if so, why they're still palling around with neoconservative hardliners.?
I think that it is also the case that the neocons have successfully moved the mainstream in their direction, despite the fiasco of the Iraq war. Will Obama opt for war with Iran? Though not by any means a certainly, it is not out of the question either. The following is a possible scenario.
I would expect that initially the Obama administration will have to focus almost totally on the economy, with foreign policy put on the back burner. When all the business/financial bailouts and stimulus packages fail to rejuvenate the economy, then will be time to make use of the war card.
Continued poor economic conditions could provide the political incentive to divert attention away from the domestic arena to wars abroad. Obama, with the image of being a man of peace, would have greater credibility with the American people in pursuing a hardline policy toward Iran than either Bush or McCain, especially after he would pursue an effort at diplomacy, without offering any substantial quid pro quo to Iran.
And Obama would be pushed in this direction by the neocons outside his administration and the hawks within.
Once diplomacy broke down, tougher measures would be portrayed as the only alternative with an allegedly intransigent foe. Policies such as a naval blockade would likely lead to military confrontations and the justification for the US air attack on Iran. The Iranian response (such as an effort to block the shipping in the Persian Gulf) would cause a spiraling into a broader war.
I might add that I discussed Obama?s foreign policy picks on Press TV. The show was ?American Dream? and I was on a panel with an AEI person and a Democratic Party operative. Except for my physical appearance, I think I did fairly well in the discussion.
The program also mentioned my book, ?The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel? http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Cabal-Neoconservative-National-Interest/dp/1932528172
Press TV Interview Video
http://www.presstv.com/Programs/player/Default.aspx?id=76622
It was the Nov. 25 show. To view you must hit "windows media player"
PressTV is funded by the Iranian government but it has numerous Establishment participants, including neoconservatives, who are hostile toward Iran. The ?American Dream? is an illustration. The host of the program, Elliott Francis, is an African-American television journalist.
Here is Wikipedia?s description:
Elliott Francis is a Washington, D.C.-based television journalist
Elliott Francis brings more than 25 years of experience in news reporting to his role as co-anchor for ABC-7's Weekend News. An Emmy Award winning journalist, and former anchor and regional correspondent for The Fox News Channel, Elliott has sparked compelling and informative conversation with many top newsmakers and celebrities.
[Needless to say, I was not one of the aforementioned ?top newsmakers and celebrities.?]
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http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2008/12/02/pinch_me,_am_i_dreaming
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Mona Charen:
Pinch Me, Am I Dreaming?
by Mona Charen
Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Obama's appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I'm almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell.
Such reticence has not afflicted everyone on the right, though. Here's Max Boot, conservative editorialist, author, and military historian: "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain..." Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that the Obama administration was "off to a good start." And New York Times columnist David Brooks has acknowledged that he is "tremendously impressed."
If I were a left-winger, I'd be tearing out my hair about now.
The economic team of Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Christina Romer does not exactly send a "to the ramparts" message. Summers, treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, is known for his belief in free financial markets, free trade, and fiscal discipline. He got into terrific trouble as president of Harvard for implying that, on average, men are more mathematically talented than women (which is true but that is irrelevant in the Ivy League). They made him grovel for that one, and to his shame, he did. The whole scene at Harvard, I gather from Stephan Thernstrom, who was there, was like something out of China's Cultural Revolution where the mob makes the professor confess error and beg for punishment. Still, if you want a centrist, Summers is your man.
Geithner is a Summers protege. As president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank he has been knee-deep in bailouts over the past three months. But that datum doesn't distinguish him from the Bush administration or anyone else in the mainstream of America's economic elite.
Romer recently penned an article making the case that tax cuts can increase economic activity. Hmmm.
If the economic team is centrist, the foreign policy team (and I pinch myself as I say this) leans a little to the right. Did you notice that in introducing his choices, the President-elect used the term "defeat our enemies"?
Gen. James Jones, Obama's choice for national security adviser, is a four-star Marine general who was commandant of the Marine Corps and Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (SACEUR), among other posts. Response to his nomination among conservatives ranged from cautious optimism to outright enthusiasm. "He is a thoroughly decent man" one conservative foreign policy analyst told me. Though his political views are not known, he has received the "Keeper of the Flame" award from the hard-line Center for Security Policy. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's (and National Review's) Michael Ledeen, no coddler of wimps, calls him "almost unbearably delightful" in the two or three conversations they've had. Everyone seems to agree that he has high intelligence and deep patriotism. If there is a hesitation, it arises from the fact that he is, like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, a political general, and those have not always worked out so well.
As for Hillary Clinton, well, she is no Jeane Kirkpatrick. While it's true that she declined to apologize for her vote in favor of the Iraq war, she did everything but. It was only last year that she told Gen. Petraeus that his report on progress in Iraq "require(ed) a willing suspension of disbelief." She opposed the surge of troops in Iraq but then -- this is chutzpah! -- attempted to take credit for its success. On Meet the Press in January 2008 she said "...The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Sen. Obama, Sen. Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along."
She has criticized what she calls the Bush administration's "obsessive" focus on "expensive and unproven missile defense technology." On trade, she has made protectionist noises. On the other hand, she is not Carl Levin or Dennis Kucinich or Anthony Lake or Samantha Power. And that, along with the other appointments, is enough to keep some of us smiling at a time when we were expecting to be in deep anguish.
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13847
December 3, 2008
Is Iran Policy Still Up for Grabs?
by Robert Dreyfuss and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water?
After all, that massive U.S. air attack on Iran that anti-imperial critics long expected to arrive, that Seymour Hersh wrote about, that so many feared, never happened and, with Barack Obama's election, should certainly have been put to rest in a deep grave for all eternity. But don't underestimate the neocons, or their ability to reconfigure themselves for a Democratic administration. Robert Dreyfuss, author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, who also produces "The Dreyfuss Report" for the Nation magazine's Web site, offers up some tantalizing clues to their possible future resurrection ? and some altogether eerie connections between neocon Washington and the future Obama team.
To give Dreyfuss his creds, only the other day the Wall Street Journal actually began an editorial on the new Obama national security "team" by attacking an analysis Dreyfuss had done of it the previous week. ("The names floated for Barack Obama's national security team 'are drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist, and pro-military circles without even a single ? yes, not one! ? chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party.' In his plaintive post this week on the Nation magazine's Web site, Robert Dreyfuss indulges in the political left's wonderful talent for overstatement. But who are we to interfere with his despair?") Given their right-wing proclivities, the Journal's editorial writers then offer the equivalent of high praise for Obama's choices: "So far," they conclude, "on security, not bad." That should make just about anyone who voted for Obama to change American global policy in significant ways pause a moment for reflection.
And the Journal isn't alone. Other Republicans are, according to the Times of London, already "showering praise on these selections. Senator Lindsey Graham said that Mr. Gates, President Bush's defense secretary, had 'led us through difficult times in Iraq' and that Mrs. Clinton had a 'little harder line' than Mr. Obama on foreign policy." The dark prince of neocons Richard Perle commented, "I'm relieved? Contrary to expectations, I don't think we would see a lot of change."
Give it a year and a little Iranian, American, and Israeli intransigence and who knows what scenarios might arise. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the neocons. Like vampires of legend, barring a stake through the heart, they arrive on the scene as soon as darkness sets in. Tom
Still Preparing to Attack Iran
The neoconservatives in the Obama era
by Robert Dreyfuss
What, exactly, does Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former Sen. Tom Daschle, have to do with neocons who want to bomb Iran?
A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail ? and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. Some are meant to occur alongside any future talks. These include steps to enhance coordination with Israel, tougher sanctions against Iran, and a region-wide military buildup of U.S. strike forces, including the pre-positioning of military supplies within striking distance of that country.
Once the future negotiations break down, as they are convinced will happen, they propose that Washington quickly escalate to warlike measures, including a U.S. Navy-enforced embargo on Iranian fuel imports and a blockade of that country's oil exports. Finally, of course, comes the strategic military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran that so many of them have wanted for so long.
It's tempting to dismiss the hawks now as twice-removed from power: first, figures like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith were purged from top posts in the Bush administration after 2004; then the election of Barack Obama and the announcement Monday of his centrist, realist-minded team of establishment foreign policy gurus seemed to nail the doors to power shut for the neocons, who have bitterly criticized the president-elect's plans to talk with Iran, withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, and abandon the reckless Global War on Terrorism rhetoric of the Bush era.
"Kinetic Action" Against Iran
When it comes to Iran, however, it's far too early to dismiss the hawks. To be sure, they are now plying their trade from outside the corridors of power, but they have more friends inside the Obama camp than most people realize. Several top advisers to Obama ? including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton ? have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and other hardline institutes.
Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report titled "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow.
Endorsed by both Lake and Rice, the report opted for an alarmist view of Iran's nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal U.S.-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for "preventive military action"). It drew attention to Israeli fears that "the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of 'living with an Iranian nuclear bomb,'" and it raised the spurious fear that Iran plans to arm terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with consultations between the United States and Israel. But the WINEP report is clearly predisposed to the idea that the United States ought to give undue weight to Israel's inflated concerns about Iran. And it ignores or dismisses a number of facts: that Iran has no nuclear weapon, that Iran has not enriched uranium to weapons grade, that Iran may not have the know-how to actually construct a weapon even if, sometime in the future, it does manage to acquire bomb-grade material, and that Iran has no known mechanism for delivering such a weapon.
WINEP is correct that the United States must communicate closely with Israel about Iran. Practically speaking, however, a U.S.-Israeli dialogue over Iran's "nuclear challenge" will have to focus on matters entirely different from those in WINEP's agenda. First, the United States must make it crystal clear to Israel that under no circumstances will it tolerate or support a unilateral Israeli attack against Iran. Second, Washington must make it clear that if Israel were indeed to carry out such an attack, the United States would condemn it, refuse to widen the war by coming to Israel's aid, and suspend all military aid to the Jewish state. And third, Israel must get the message that, even given the extreme and unlikely possibility that the United States deems it necessary to go to war with Iran, there would be no role for Israel.
Just as in the wars against Iraq in 1990-1991 and 2003-2008, the United States hardly needs Israeli aid, which would be both superfluous and inflammatory. Dennis Ross and others at WINEP, however, would strongly disagree that Israel is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Ross, who served as Middle East envoy for George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton, was also a key participant in a September 2008 task force chaired by two former senators, Daniel Coats (R.-Ind.) and Chuck Robb (D.-Va.), and led by Michael Makovsky, brother of WINEP's David Makovsky, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the heyday of the Pentagon neocons from 2002-2006. Robb, incidentally, had already served as the neocons' channel into the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton. According to Bob Woodward's latest book, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, it was Robb who insisted that the Baker-Hamilton task force include an option for a "surge" in Iraq.
The report of the Coats-Robb task force ? "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" ? went far beyond the WINEP task force report that Lake and Rice signed off on. It concluded that any negotiations with Iran were unlikely to succeed and should, in any case, be short-lived. As the report put the matter, "It must be clear that any U.S.-Iranian talks will not be open-ended, but will be limited to a predetermined time period so that Tehran does not try to 'run out the clock.'"
Anticipating the failure of the talks, the task force (including Ross) urged "pre-positioning military assets," coupled with a "show of force" in the region. This would be followed almost immediately by a blockade of Iranian gasoline imports and oil exports, meant to paralyze Iran's economy, followed by what they call, vaguely, "kinetic action."
That "kinetic action" ? a U.S. assault on Iran ? should, in fact, be massive, suggested the Coats-Robb report. Besides hitting dozens of sites alleged to be part of Iran's nuclear research program, the attacks would target Iranian air defense and missile sites, communications systems, Revolutionary Guard facilities, key parts of Iran's military-industrial complex, munitions storage facilities, airfields, aircraft facilities, and all of Iran's naval facilities. Eventually, they say, the United States would also have to attack Iran's ground forces, electric power plants and electrical grids, bridges, and "manufacturing plants, including steel, autos, buses, etc."
This is, of course, a hair-raising scenario. Such an attack on a country that had committed no act of war against the United States or any of its allies would cause countless casualties, virtually destroy Iran's economy and infrastructure, and wreak havoc throughout the region. That such a high-level group of luminaries should even propose steps like these ? and mean it ? can only be described as lunacy. That an important adviser to President-elect Obama would sign on to such a report should be shocking, though it has received next to no attention.
Palling Around With the Neocons
At a Nov. 6 forum at WINEP, Patrick Clawson, the erudite, neoconservative strategist who serves as the organization's deputy director for research, laid out the institute's view of how to talk to Iran in the Obama era. Doing so, he said, is critically important, but only to show the rest of the world that the United States has taken the last step for peace ? before, of course, attacking. Then, and only then, will the United States have the legitimacy it needs to launch military action against Iran.
"What we've got to do is to show the world that we're making a big deal of engaging the Iranians," he said, tossing a bone to the new administration. "I'd throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into it." He advocates this approach only because he believes it won't work. "The principal target with these offers [to Iran] is not Iran," he adds. "The principal target of these offers is American public opinion and world public opinion."
The Coats-Robb report, "Meeting the Challenge," was written by one of the hardest of Washington's neoconservative hardliners, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Rubin, who spent most of the years since 9/11 either working for AEI or, before and during the war in Iraq, for the Wolfowitz-Feith team at the Pentagon, recently penned a report for the Institute entitled: "Can A Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?" Not surprisingly, he believes the answer to be a resounding "no," although he does suggest that any effort to contain a nuclear Iran would certainly require permanent U.S. bases spread widely in the region, including in Iraq:
"If U.S. forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing not only in GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Without a sizable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran, and Washington will signal its lack of commitment to every ally in the region. Because containment is as much psychological as physical, basing will be its backbone."
The Coats-Robb report was issued by a little-known group called the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That organization, too, turns out to be interwoven with WINEP, not least because its foreign policy director is Michael Makovsky. Perhaps the most troubling participant in the Bipartisan Policy Center is Barack Obama's é©nence grise and one of his most important advisers during the campaign, Tom Daschle, who is slated to be his secretary of health and human services. So far, Daschle has not repudiated BPC's provocative report.
Ross, along with Richard Holbrooke, recently made appearances amid another collection of superhawks who came together to found a new organization, United Against Nuclear Iran. UANI is led by Mark Wallace, the husband of Nicole Wallace, a key member of Sen. John McCain's campaign team. Among UANI's leadership team are Ross and Holbrooke, along with such hardliners as Jim Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Fouad Ajami, the Arab-American scholar who is a principal theorist on Middle East policy for the neoconservative movement.
UANI is primarily a propaganda outfit. Its mission, it says, is to "inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran's role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad" and to "heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world."
Barack Obama has, of course, repeatedly declared his intention to embark on a different path by opening talks with Iran. He's insisted that diplomacy, not military action, will be at the core of his approach to Tehran. During the election campaign, however, he also stated no less repeatedly that he will not take the threat of military action "off the table."
Organizations like WINEP, AIPAC, AEI, BPC, and UANI see it as their mission to push the United States toward a showdown with Iran. Don't sell them short. Those who believe that such a confrontation would be inconceivable under President Obama ought to ask Tony Lake, Susan Rice, Dennis Ross, Tom Daschle, and Richard Holbrooke whether they agree ? and, if so, why they're still palling around with neoconservative hardliners.
Robert Dreyfuss, an independent journalist in Alexandria, Va., is a contributing editor at the Nation magazine, whose Web site hosts his "The Dreyfuss Report," and has written frequently for Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/boot/44551
Obama?s Picks
Max Boot - 11.25.2008 - 6:38 PM
According to the latest news reports, President-elect Obama will nominate a national security team next week that is stunning in its moderation. The headliners?Bob Gates staying at Defense, Hillary Clinton becoming Secretary of State, retired General Jim Jones taking over the NSC?have already been more or less reported, or at least much speculated on. The lower-level picks are just as encouraging:
Democrats familiar with the national-security event early next week said they also expect James Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, to be named deputy secretary of State; Susan Rice, Obama?s senior foreign policy adviser on the campaign, to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command and a veteran of the NSC, Central Intelligence Agency and Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be named the director of national intelligence.
The only outright leftist in the bunch is Susan Rice, and she is being shunted aside to a post where the premium is on rhetoric, not action. She will presumably be called upon to explain and defend policies formulated by the senior national security team which includes two men who are not Democrats?Gates and Jones?and one woman who is on the rightward side of the Democratic Party when it comes to national security issues (and paid a price for it in the primaries).
As someone who was skeptical of Obama?s moderate posturing during the campaign, I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments , most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain. (Jim Jones is an old friend of McCain?s, and McCain almost certainly would have asked Gates to stay on as well.) This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign. His appointments suggest that, if anything, his administration will have a Reapolitiker, rather than a liberal, bent, although Clinton and Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for ?neo-liberalism? which is not so different in many respects from ?neo-conservativism?. Both, for instance, support humanitarian interventions in places like Darfur and Bosnia.
Combined with the moderation of the economic team that Obama has just named, I would say his administration already far exceeds expectations, and he hasn?t even taken office yet.
The real test, of course, will be seeing how this all-star lineup deals with real-world crises. It helps to recall that George W. Bush-another newcomer to Washington-arrived with a raft of heavy hitters: Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney. Simply to recite those names today is to make obvious that even the most distinguished statesmen may not congeal into an effective team. That is a danger to watch out for in the Obama administration, but the new team deserves the benefit of the doubt and all best wishes for success from Republicans and Democrats alike. Only churlish partisans of both the left and the right can be unhappy with the emerging tenor of our nation?s new leadership.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/opinion/21brooks.html?_r=1
The Insider?s Crusade
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 21, 2008, New York Times
Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).
The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).
This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy ? rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we?re screwed.
Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. They typically served in the Clinton administration and then, like Cincinnatus, retreated to the comforts of private life ? that is, if Cincinnatus had worked at Goldman Sachs, Williams & Connolly or the Brookings Institution. So many of them send their kids to Georgetown Day School, the posh leftish private school in D.C., that they?ll be able to hold White House staff meetings in the carpool line.
And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition.
The fact that they can already leak one big appointee per day is testimony to an awful lot of expert staff work. Unlike past Democratic administrations, they are not just handing out jobs to the hacks approved by the favored interest groups. They?re thinking holistically ? there?s a nice balance of policy wonks, governors and legislators. They?re also thinking strategically. As Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute notes, it was smart to name Tom Daschle both the head of Health and Human Services and the health czar. Splitting those duties up, as Bill Clinton did, leads to all sorts of conflicts.
Most of all, they are picking Washington insiders. Or to be more precise, they are picking the best of the Washington insiders.
Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced ?fresh faces? to change things. After all, it was L.B.J. who passed the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, because he is so young, Obama is not bringing along an insular coterie of lifelong aides who depend upon him for their well-being.
As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory. One may not agree with them on everything or even most things, but a few things are indisputably true.
First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence. Orszag, who will probably be budget director, is trusted by Republicans and Democrats for his honest presentation of the facts.
Second, they are admired professionals. Conservative legal experts have a high regard for the probable attorney general, Eric Holder, despite the business over the Marc Rich pardon.
Third, they are not excessively partisan. Obama signaled that he means to live up to his postpartisan rhetoric by letting Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship.
Fourth, they are not ideological. The economic advisers, Furman and Goolsbee, are moderate and thoughtful Democrats. Hillary Clinton at State is problematic, mostly because nobody has a role for her husband. But, as she has demonstrated in the Senate, her foreign-policy views are hardheaded and pragmatic. (It would be great to see her set of interests complemented by Samantha Power?s set of interests at the U.N.)
Finally, there are many people on this team with practical creativity. Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests. Dennis Ross, who advised Obama during the campaign, is the best I?ve ever seen at this, but Rahm Emanuel also has this capacity, as does Craig and legislative liaison Phil Schiliro.
Believe me, I?m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He?s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Jun 06, 2009 5:46 pm; edited 4 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject: In Gaza the Real Enemy is Iran |
| In Gaza the Real Enemy is Iran
Saturday, January 10, 2009 9:59 AM
From: "Stephen Sniegoski"
In Gaza the Real Enemy is Iran
Friends,
The Neocon thesis that Iran is the real culprit behind Hamas and the trouble in Gaza is catching on as a result of Israel's brutal attack on Gaza. Neocon Michael Ledeen writes “it is impossible to address the Arab/Israeli conflict by itself, for the context is all wrong. Nobody in Gaza or the West Bank, nor in Amman or Cairo, can guarantee peace for Israel. Today, that decision rests in the hands of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until there is a different government in Tehran, there cannot be peace between Arabs and Israelis, any more than there can be peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Lebanon.”
According to this argument, which is actually the central neocon argument I describe in “The Transparent Cabal,” everything would be just fine between Israel and the Palestinians if the Palestinian radicals were not egged on and supplied with arms by outside powers—thus the need to eliminate all of Israel's external enemies. After the elimination of Saddam, Iran became the central focus. And the fact of the matter is that what the neocons are saying is true, with this caveat—everything would be fine FOR ISRAEL if its external enemies were eliminated and the Palestinians were completely without any external support, moral or material. In such a situation, the Palestinians would be forced to accede to any type of “peace” offer the Israelis offered, which essentially would consist of waterless, noncontiguous Bantustans, interspersed with Jewish settlements and Jewish only roads, and with Israel controlling the boundaries of the Palestinian “state.” In short, the situation would be quite similar to that of Gaza. .
As the first article by Daniel Luban points out, the neocon depiction of this alleged Iran proxy war is going beyond neocon circles. Of course, this includes the usual suspects such as NY Times luminary Thomas Friedman who was initially a rabid supporter of the war on Iraq portraying it as “one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad.” (New York Times, November 30, 2003). The liberal Friedman believes (or at least claims to believe) that without Palestinian resistance Israel would act fairly toward the Palestinians and provide them with a economically and politically viable state, “with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem.” If he means that the Palestinians would have full control of this territory, which would include control of its borders, water, roads, etc—he is describing something that Israel has never offered, and, I believe, never will.
This whole “Iran-as-culprit” argument provides perfect spin to justify what Israel is doing in Gaza and serves to absolve the Israelis of the atrocities they are committing. By this argument, it is not only the Israelis who are blameless for the human devastation they were causing in Gaza but so also the Palestinians. The pro-Israeli claim that the Gazans are actually responsible for their own suffering is not the best public relations ploy, especially when one can actually see their suffering. “Blaming the victim” is never good propaganda. Focusing on Iran as the culprit enables the Palestinian people to now appear as victims—victims that Israel is actually trying to help. Hamas is simply a dupe of Iran. It is Iran, or rather the Iranian leadership, that is the evil doer. Of course, the real end goal is to destroy the Palestinians as a collective entity by eliminating all their external support and thus debilitating their ability to resist. As I point out in the “The Transparent Cabal,” the Israeli Right perceives the greatest danger to Israel as the Palestinian demographic threat which would undermine the Jewish nature of the Jewish state—Israel’s raison d'être.
Adding to what the articles say, it is my belief that the utterly ruthless tactics used by Israel—attacking UN workers, intentionally killing civilians, etc—could be intended to force Iran to be more openly involved in the war or face the total loss of influence and prestige with the Palestinians and their other allies. Is Iran simply going to stand aside and watch the Palestinians be slaughtered? Ultimately such a position would make it appear to almost all Palestinians that no one is able to help them; the UN, Iran, the Arab states are simply impotent in the face of Israel (backed by the US) Resistance to Israel would be seen as absolutely futile and self-destructive, and that in order to survive as human beings it would be essential to abandon resistance and accede to Israel’s demands.
The situation in Hungary after the Soviets suppressed its 1956 revolt could be seen as sort of an analogy. At that time, the US government’s information/propaganda outlets for Soviet-controlled Europe had been preaching resistance to Soviet Communism. When the Hungarians did rebel the US was unwilling to provide any armed support, being fearful of starting a war with the Soviet Union. After the suppression of the rebellion, Hungarians realized that resistance was not only futile but counterproductive, and that they would have to accept Soviet domination. Similarly, if the Israelis continue to kill the Palestinians without any outside intervention the Palestinians would be forced to give in to Israeli “peace” offers as the best future possible. Unlike the Hungarian scenario, however, the Palestinians would lose their homeland and be destroyed as a people. (At least this is the neocon/Likudnik scenario).
Of course, if Iran would dare to actually intervene militarily in the Gaza situation, the United States would step in and clobber it (through air attacks).
While all of this would improve the geostrategic situation for Israel (from the Likudnik/Neocon perspective, at least), America would be faced by an even more hostile Islamic world, and a more hostile world in general.
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http://www.antiwar.com/ips/luban.php?articleid=14035
January 10, 2009
In Washington, All Roads Lead to Tehran
by Daniel Luban
As the war in Gaza approaches its third week, a chorus of influential voices in the U.S. media has cast the conflict as a proxy war in which the real enemy is not Hamas but Iran.
The result has been a growing tendency in the U.S. to view Gaza as simply one battleground in a larger war between Iran and the West, and to dismiss the stated concerns of the Palestinians as a mere smoke screen for Iranian influence.
But critics charge that this way of framing the conflict is both overly simplistic and agenda-driven. By overstating the importance of Iran's operational aid to Hamas, they claim, these opinion-makers aim to increase hostilities with Iran, to bolster an increasingly shaky Israeli rationale for war, and to curtail any inclination to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians.
For years, it has been a commonplace among neoconservatives that Iran is the real source of opposition to the U.S. and Israel throughout the Middle East, from Palestine to Lebanon to Iraq. During Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, prominent neoconservatives urged the West to focus "less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders in Syria and Iran," as William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard.
Similarly, neoconservatives have taken the current war with Hamas as a sign that the West needs to take a harder line with Iran. "It's all about Iran," Michael Ledeen, a prominent Iran hawk based at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote in National Review inline on Dec. 30. "[The Israelis] are left to contend with the tentacles of the terrorist hydra, while the main body remains untouched. They may chop off a piece of Hamas or Hezbollah, but it will regenerate and grab them again."
However, the belief that Hamas is merely an Iranian proxy has spread beyond neoconservative circles to be voiced by opinion-makers closer to the political center. Self-described realist Robert Kaplan wrote in the Atlantic on Monday that "Israel's attack on Gaza is, in effect, an attack on Iran's empire. … Our own diplomacy with Iran now rests on whether or not Israel succeeds."
In the New York Times, influential neoliberal Thomas Friedman implied that Iran was to blame for the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, writing that Tehran can "stop and start the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at will." In the Los Angeles Times, Israeli commentators Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren wrote an op-ed titled "In Gaza, the Real Enemy Is Iran," which warned that if Hamas "manipulat[es] world opinion into the imposition of a premature cease-fire … [it] would mean another triumph for Iran."
And in the literature released by hawkish advocacy groups such as the Israel Project, Hamas is rarely mentioned without the adjective "Iran-backed."
It is widely accepted that Iran has in fact provided weaponry and other operational assistance to Hamas in recent years. However, there are few reliable estimates of the scope of this aid.
"I'm very skeptical whenever I see figures in the media," former State Department intelligence official Wayne White, now of the Middle East Institute, told IPS. "Even when I was in the intelligence community, exact details were often elusive."
Many feel that those blaming Iran for the Gaza crisis attach too much importance to Iran's operational aid to Hamas when they suggest that Hamas is nothing more than an Iranian "proxy."
White suggested that Iran's relationship with Hamas is "more symbiotic than dictatorial," and that its influence with Hamas is more limited than is portrayed in the media. "Iranian inspiration is being given far too much weight in the overall Israeli-Hamas equation. Hamas has every reason to make its own decisions, most of which are sufficiently militant to please the Iranians," he said.
Critics charge that framing the Gaza conflict as an U.S.-Iran proxy war is a tendentious move that is meant to advance several covert political goals.
The most obvious of these goals is to increase hostilities with Iran. Unsurprisingly, many of those espousing the "proxy war" argument, such as Ledeen, are advocates of regime change in Tehran, backed if necessary by military force.
But the proxy war argument has also been deployed to bolster the Israeli case for war in Gaza, as Israel's war aims have become increasingly slippery and elusive over the past two weeks.
Israeli officials have at times suggested that the war is intended to halt all rocket fire from Gaza, or to overthrow Hamas rule in Gaza, but both of these goals are viewed by many as unrealistic, and the Israeli government has subsequently backed off of them.
Casting the military campaign as a struggle against Iranian power provides a broader rationale for war, and has been used as a way to rally support from U.S. policymakers who are skeptical of the campaign's wisdom. On this analysis, Israel is doing the U.S.' dirty work by confronting Iranian power.
In this vein, the Wall Street Journal editorialized on Monday that the war would help President-elect Barack Obama's diplomatic efforts with Iran, since "the mullahs are going to be more interested in diplomacy if their military proxies have been defeated."
And hawkish liberal Jim Hoagland suggested in the Washington Post that Israel's attack was helping to hold off the possibility of a nuclear Iran, writing that "only Israel poses any threat of military action to halt Iran's drive to enrich enough uranium to build a nuclear bomb."
But one important consequence of the proxy-war argument, critics say, has more to do with Palestine than with Iran. By portraying Hamas as nothing more than a projection of Iranian power, commentators implicitly reject any notion that the group may derive its influence from specifically Palestinian concerns.
By doing so, the critics argue, these commentators seek to assuage Israeli consciences by portraying Hamas as the product of a nebulous Islamist menace rather than of local grievances about occupation, refugees, or settlements.
But more than that, they seek to remove any impetus to compromise on such issues. If Iranian power is the real cause of Israel's Palestinian problem, then a local settlement with the Palestinians would do little to alleviate Israel's insecurity.
In response, a growing number of analysts have spoken out against this line of thinking.
"Yes, the conflict has been exploited on many sides and certainly by Iran and other hardliners in the region," wrote former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation on Monday. "but if the unaddressed Palestinian grievance did not exist then it would not be there to exploit."
White concurred in his assessment of the situation.
"The [proxy war] view is a very unsophisticated one," he told IPS. "This is at bottom a struggle between Hamas, along with many other Palestinians, and the Israelis."
(Inter Press Service)
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http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledeen/2008/12/29/the-battle-of-gaza-and-the-real-war/?print=1
The Battle of Gaza and The Real War
Posted By Michael Ledeen On December 29, 2008
It was only a matter of time before Israel lashed out at Hamas in Gaza. Even the appeasers in Israel, of whom there are many, could not indefinitely accept thousands of rockets landing in civilian centers, especially after the battle against Hezbollah in 2006, which was widely viewed as a fiasco for the Israeli Army and for the leaders in Jerusalem who are facing an election in two months. Defense Minister Barak says it’s “all-out war,” which suggests ground operations. The usual rule in these cases is that Israel doesn’t have much time to accomplish its objectives; the “international community” rallies to the side of Israel’s enemies, and Israel’s leaders invariably convince themselves that if they play ball, they’ll be rewarded for it. But that never happens. So far the Brits and the Vatican have already demanded an end to operations against Hamas, and by the time I finish typing this there will be more.
Israeli leaders say they want to bring an end to the rocket and missile attacks from Gaza. But, as opposition leader Netanyahu said, that can’t be done without regime change.
Our goal should be twofold - stopping the attacks on our cities and eliminating the threat of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip…Stopping the attacks can be done within a short period of time, while eliminating the threat of rocket attacks from Gaza will entail toppling the Hamas rule over the Strip and uprooting the Iranian base there.
The last five words are key, because, as others have said, this is one more battle in the terror war in which we have been engaged since 2001. The Battle of Gaza cannot be understood as a thing in itself, but only as part of a broader whole: the war against the terror masters. And Iran is the most lethal, the most dangerous, and the most aggressive terror master in the world today.
Step back from the Gaza battle for just a second, and look at the war itself: it extends from Afghanistan to Pakistan and India, to Somalia, to Gaza/the Palestinian Authority/Israel, to Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia, with occasional skirmishes in the vast Kurdish domain (which embraces areas of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran), across Europe, into the United States and Canada and down to South America, including Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, with attendant terror/narcotics mafias that in turn operate in West Africa. Iran is present in all these theaters, primarily via its proxies Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards (Quds Force).
Like the global totalitarian movements and regimes that threatened Western civilization in the last century, the Iranians come with a messianic ideology that admits no compromise with its enemies. This war will only end with a winner and a loser, not with two contented negotiators. We can win this war–we’ve delivered a stunning defeat to Iran and her proxies in Iraq, for example–and our most powerful weapons are political, not military. Had we taken the war to Tehran, the terror forces in Gaza would, at a minimum, be a lot weaker today, as they would be in Afghanistan and Lebanon. But we continue to dither, and the new American leaders are fooling themselves when they say that vigorous diplomacy can induce the mullahs to retreat. It won’t happen, any more than the Israelis got the terrorists to retreat from all-out war against the Jews when the Oslo Agreement was signed, or when Rabin shook hands with Arafat. It only delayed the days of reckoning, at the cost of many lives, mostly of innocents, on both sides.
There is a disgusting conceit that underlies the “realist” position that negotiations will solve these problems: the conceit that tyrants will be easier to deal with than free peoples. Rabin and Peres actually said this, once upon a time, with their smug statements to the effect that Arafat and the others would control the terrorists because they didn’t give a damn about the Geneva Conventions or other legal niceties. They, and those who think the same applies to the Iranians, forget that our enemies want us dead or dominated, they don’t want a world at peace in which they will have to deal with real problems of governance. They are waging jihad, not diplomacy.
It follows from this that you cannot “solve” Gaza by fighting in Gaza alone, you have to win the terror war. And to do that, you must accomplish regime change, just as Netanyahu said. But the crucial regime change must be accomplished in Iran. Whatever Israel accomplishes in Gaza (and the same holds for our battles in Iraq and Afghanistan), it is only a matter of time before the mullahs reorganize, rearm, and return to battle. And the next battle may involve nuclear weapons.
Paradoxically, those people who fume at the very idea of challenging the Iranian regime are actually making a truly terrible war more likely, not less. Those few of us who believe that support for Iranian democratic dissidents could bring down the mullahs are almost universally scorned, and even accused of seeking war. It is just the opposite. The same accusations were directed against us when we supported Soviet dissidents, and called for regime change in Moscow. And yet the Soviet Empire came down. The Iranian regime is far weaker than the Soviet state. An overwhelming number of Iranians oppose the regime, and are dreaming of the day when we finally embrace their cause. Perhaps there are still some brave men and women in the Democratic Party who understand that America is a revolutionary country, and that we are bound by our honor, our principles, and our national interest to support the democratic forces in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, the three leading terror masters, along with those in Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia, now scurrying to jump on the bandwagon of Islamic tyranny.
Finally, if I am right, it is impossible to address the Arab/Israeli conflict by itself, for the context is all wrong. Nobody in Gaza or the West Bank, nor in Amman or Cairo, can guarantee peace for Israel. Today, that decision rests in the hands of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Until there is a different government in Tehran, there cannot be peace between Arabs and Israelis, any more than there can be peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Lebanon.
It’s a big war, but we’re a big country with enormous capacities. Time to fight the real war.
Faster, Please.
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http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWViYTRlYmEzNmNmN2VkNGQzNzExZjBjMjY0YjQ2Yzg=
National Review Online
December 30, 2008, 0:00 p.m.
Wrong Story
The real problem is Iran.
By Michael Ledeen
Everyone in the Middle East knows that the serious component of the Battle of Gaza is all about Iran. The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, recently warned that Iran is trying to “devour” the Arab world. Mohammed Abdallah Al Zulfa, of the Saudi Arabian Shura Council, reminded Alhurra’s viewers that “Iran is the big threat in today’s world, supporting all the terrorists from Hamas to Hezbollah to some other terrorists that we don’t know their names yet,” and that “Iran destabilized the region by supporting all the illegal activities and activists such as Hamas.” Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, in a press conference in Anakara, ranted against Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, saying that the Iranian-run terror organization had “practically declared war on Egypt.”
So it is not totally surprising that Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman reportedly told the Israelis that Egypt wouldn’t oppose a quick strike designed to bring down Hamas, or that Palestinian Authority chief Abu Mazen blames Hamas, which is largely an Iranian proxy, for the fighting. Israeli opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu called for “toppling the Hamas rule over the [Gaza] Strip and uprooting the Iranian base there,” which is probably what most Arab leaders want, even as they prepare to denounce Israel at the upcoming Wednesday meeting of the Arab League (the best portrayal of which can be seen in David Lean’s magisterial film Lawrence of Arabia). It is also what the United States should want, instead of pursuing the mirage of a Middle Eastern peace that cannot possibly be accomplished so long as the mullahs rule in Tehran. They will continue their 30-year proxy war against the infidels until they either win or lose, and Israel will always be one of their prime targets. David Horvitz implores us to remember the Iranian connection, and he rightly says that at least some countries might support an action that defeats a major Iranian initiative.
The less serious component of the war has to do with domestic Israeli politics. The current crowd, Olmert/Livni/Barak, is facing an election in a couple of months and has no chance of being returned to office if mortars, missiles and rockets continue to fly into Israeli towns and cities from the Gaza Strip. Ergo, the air attack. There are those who believe that the Israeli Army will soon move into Gaza as well. As the 2006 war against the Iranians’ Hezbollah demonstrated, you can’t destroy a terrorist organization from the air alone, and Olmert/Livni/Barak lost a great deal of public support when they failed to eliminate Hezbollah. They certainly don’t want a repeat of that political debacle.
I would be surprised if the army does invade. These Israeli leaders have been minimalists, and an invasion of Gaza would require both a kind of nerve they have not shown before and the courage to challenge the global community of negotiators (a/k/a appeasers) and thereby risk losing their seat at the big dining-room tables of world capitals. Still, life is full of surprises, and if the air war fails to stop the missile, mortar, and rocket attacks from Gaza (and as of Monday evening, Washington time, they were still flying and still killing Israeli civilians), Olmert/Livni/Barak may feel compelled to take further risks.
Meanwhile, what of the terrorists? Some may be surprised that most of the pictures Hamas has provided to the international media have shown dead fighters, officials, and police, rather than civilians. True, very few civilians have been killed, but that has never stopped Hamas and its ilk from providing photographic “evidence” that later turned out to be phony. The presentation of their own dead is of a piece with their ideology; it is a glorification of martyrdom, part of a broader call to arms, a hymn to the cult of death that inspires the jihad. And the high priest of that cult is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has often spoken of martyrdom as the highest calling (for others, mind you, certainly not for himself). Please do not tell me that this cannot be, since the Iranians are Shiites and Hamas is Sunni; radical Shiites and Palestinian terrorists have been in cahoots for at least 37 years. Hamas gets weapons, training, intelligence, and money from the mullahs in return for doing their bidding. It’s all about Iran, you see.
And please don’t tell me that this only proves the urgency of diplomacy. It proves the opposite. There cannot be peace in the Middle East so long as the mullahs wage war and think they’re winning. All those martyrs are viewed as signs of progress in Tehran.
The Israelis know all this, just as they know that the mullahs are building an atomic bomb destined for Israeli territory. But Israel is a small country, despite the paranoid visions of some Western ideologues who think the Israelis run the world through espionage and lobbying. Iran is more than ten times the size of Israel, and even the most feisty Israeli shrinks from the thought of an open war with Tehran. So they are left to contend with the tentacles of the terrorist hydra, while the main body remains untouched. They may chop off a piece of Hamas or Hezbollah, but it will regenerate and grab them again.
Not that the defeat of Iranian proxies is a small matter. The United States thrashed their proxy, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and in so doing rounded up a considerable number of Iranian military and intelligence officers who were playing their usual role of consiglieri to the jihadis. Some senior Iranians have defected to the West, and the mullahs have still not managed to break the will of the pro-democracy dissidents in their own country, despite a record pace of killing that puts Iran in the running for the world’s leading executioner (they are currently running second only to China, whose population is about 20 times Iran’s).
This bespeaks a profound insecurity. It is the behavior of a regime that knows its people despise it, and, like all such tyrannies, it combines domestic terror with foreign adventure in order to preserve its position. For extras, the Iranian zealots at the top of the oppressive pyramid embrace an apocalyptic vision according to which the Last Days are upon us and the hoped-for coming of the Twelfth Imam will be best catalyzed by global bloodshed and chaos.
Thus, the best Israel can hope to accomplish is to buy time, praying that somehow or other the Iranian regime will fall before the mullahs launch their promised genocidal attack, or that the Israelis will find a way to destroy the atomic weapon before it is used against them, or that the West will, at the eleventh hour, recognize that Iran is a global threat and find a way to thwart it.
It’s a hell of a position to be in, and discussions of tactics and methods in Gaza address only a small part of the problem. The real problem isn’t even being discussed.
—Michael Ledeen is Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,3919516.story
From the Los Angeles Times
In Gaza, the real enemy is Iran
Israeli attacks must not stop until Iran's proxy, Hamas, is defeated.
By Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,3919516.story
January 4, 2009
Reporting from Jerusalem — The images from the fighting in Gaza are harrowing but ultimately deceptive. They portray a mighty invading army, one equipped with F-16 jets that have bombed a civilian population defended by a few thousand fighters armed with primitive rockets. But widen the lens and the true nature of this conflict emerges. Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is a proxy for the real enemy Israel is confronting: Iran. And Israel's current operation against Hamas represents a unique chance to deal a strategic blow to Iranian expansionism.
Until now, the Iranian revolution has appeared unstoppable. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s ended with Iranian troops occupying Iraqi territory. Iranian influence then spread to Saudi Arabia's heavily Shiite and oil-rich Eastern province, and to Lebanon through Hezbollah. Since the fall of their long-standing enemy, Saddam Hussein, Iranians have deeply infiltrated Iraq. Syria has been drawn into Iran's sphere, and even the Sunni sheikdoms of the gulf now defer to Iran, dispatching foreign ministers to Tehran and defying international sanctions against it. Iran has co-opted Hamas, a Sunni organization closely linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, transforming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a jihad against the Jewish state. But Iran's boldest achievement has been to thwart world pressure and approach the nuclear threshold. Once fortified with nuclear weapons, Iranian hegemony in the Middle East would be complete.
All of which helps explain the public statements from moderate Arab leaders, such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, who have blamed the end of the tenuous Israel-Hamas cease-fire on Hamas. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit has even called on the Arab world to stop using the U.N. as a forum for blaming Israel alone for the fighting, surely a first. Those leaders understand what many in the West have yet to grasp: The Middle East conflict is no longer just about creating a Palestinian state but about preventing the region's takeover by radical Islam. Indeed, Palestinian statehood is impossible without neutralizing the extremists who oppose any negotiated solution.
If Israel successfully overthrows Hamas in Gaza, it would strengthen anti-Iranian forces throughout the Mideast and signal the region that Iranian momentum can be reversed. The Israeli military operation could begin the process that topples a terrorist regime that seized power in the Gaza Stripin 2007 and has fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli neighborhoods.
And whether or not Hamas is ultimately overthrown, Israel can achieve substantial goals. The first is an absolute cease-fire. Previous cease-fires allowed Hamas to launch two or three rockets a week into Israel and to smuggle weapons into Gaza through tunnels. To obtain a cease-fire now, the international community should recognize Israel's right to respond to any aggression over its international border and monitor the closure of Hamas' weapons-smuggling tunnels.
Above all, the goal is to ensure that Hamas is unable to proclaim victory and thereby enhance Iranian prestige in the Arab world.
Yet even those limited goals are far from guaranteed. An earlier opportunity to check Iran -- during Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006 -- was squandered through a combination of Israeli incompetence and international pressure. Hezbollah manipulated the Western media by grossly inflating the number of civilian casualties and even "recycling" corpses from one bombed site to another.
The international community responded by imposing a cease-fire before Israel could achieve its goals and installing a peacekeeping force that has since allowed Hezbollah to more than double its prewar arsenal. Though the Israeli army killed a quarter of Hezbollah's troops and destroyed its headquarters, Israel was widely perceived as the loser. The winner was Iran.
Israel learned the bitter lesson of Lebanon. For the last two years, the Israeli army has gone back to basics, rigorously training and restoring its fighting spirit. Israeli leaders drew on that spirit to attack Hamas bases in one of the most impressive airstrikes since the 1967 Six-Day War.
Yet the question remains whether the international community has learned its Lebanon lesson, or will once again allow the jihadists to win.
Hamas is attempting to portray the Israeli invasion as a war against the Palestinian people. Television viewers are being presented with heartbreaking images of dead and injured children and supposedly indiscriminate devastation. Palestinian doctors claim that Israel has blocked the supply of vital medicines, and humanitarian organizations warn of imminent starvation. In fact, many of those claims are exaggerated.
Though civilians have, tragically, been hurt, about three-quarters of the 400 Palestinians killed so far have been gunmen -- an impressive achievement given that Hamas fires rockets from apartments, mosques and schools and uses hospitals as hide-outs.
Israel has recently allowed nearly 200 truckloads of food and medicine to enter Gaza, even under shellfire. It is in Israel's urgent interest to minimize civilian suffering and forestall international criticism. For that same reason, Hamas welcomes the suffering of Palestinian civilians. According to a BBC report on Dec. 30, dozens of ambulances were dispatched by Egypt to its border with Gaza, only to remain empty because, according to Egyptian authorities, Hamas wasn't allowing wounded Palestinians to leave.
The international community must not be duped again. If Hamas is successful in manipulating world opinion into the imposition of a premature cease-fire, it will proclaim victory and continue to stockpile long-range missiles for the next round of fighting. That would mean another triumph for Iran.
No less crucially, the international community must not allow the Gaza crisis to divert its attention from the imminent -- and ultimate -- threat of a nuclear Iran. Intelligence sources now measure that threat in months rather than years.
President-elect Barack Obama has declared his intention to confront Iran through diplomacy. Ideally, that process should begin in the aftermath of an Iranian defeat. If Israel is allowed to achieve its goals in Gaza, the Obama administration will be better poised to achieve its goals in Iran.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Michael B. Oren is a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center and a professor at the foreign service school of Georgetown University.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,376189,print.story
January 7, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Mideast’s Ground Zero
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?”
That is, Gaza is a mini-version of three great struggles that have been playing out since 1948: 1) Who is going to be the regional superpower — Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? 2) Should there be a Jewish state in the Middle East and, if so, on what Palestinian terms? And 3) Who is going to dominate Arab society — Islamists who are intolerant of other faiths and want to choke off modernity or modernists who want to embrace the future, with an Arab-Muslim face? Let’s look at each.
WHO OWNS THIS HOTEL? The struggle for hegemony over the modern Arab world is as old as Nasser’s Egypt. But what is new today is that non-Arab Iran is now making a bid for primacy — challenging Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran has deftly used military aid to both Hamas and Hezbollah to create a rocket-armed force on Israel’s northern and western borders. This enables Tehran to stop and start the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at will and to paint itself as the true protector of the Palestinians, as opposed to the weak Arab regimes.
“The Gaza that Israel left in 2005 was bordering Egypt. The Gaza that Israel just came back to is now bordering Iran,” said Mamoun Fandy, director of Middle East programs at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. “Iran has become the ultimate confrontation state. I am not sure we can talk just about ‘Arab-Israeli peace’ or the ‘Arab peace initiative’ anymore. We may be looking at an ‘Iranian initiative.’ ” In short, the whole notion of Arab-Israeli peacemaking likely will have to change.
CAN THE JEWS HAVE A ROOM HERE? Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized Israel — and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.
Why? Because nothing has damaged Palestinians more than the Hamas death-cult strategy of turning Palestinian youths into suicide bombers. Because nothing would set back a peace deal more than if Hamas’s call to replace Israel with an Islamic state became the Palestinian negotiating position. And because Hamas’s attacks on towns in southern Israel is destroying a two-state solution, even more than Israel’s disastrous and reckless West Bank settlements.
Israel has proved that it can and will uproot settlements, as it did in Gaza. Hamas’s rocket attacks pose an irreversible threat. They say to Israel: “From Gaza, we can hit southern Israel. If we get the West Bank, we can rocket, and thereby close, Israel’s international airport — anytime, any day, from now to eternity.” How many Israelis will risk relinquishing the West Bank, given this new threat?
SHOULDN’T WE BLOW UP THE BAR AND REPLACE IT WITH A MOSQUE? Hamas’s overthrow of the more secular Fatah organization in Gaza in 2007 is part of a regionwide civil war between Islamists and modernists. In the week that Israel has been slicing through Gaza, Islamist suicide bombers have killed almost 100 Iraqis — first, a group of tribal sheikhs in Yusufiya, who were working on reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and, second, mostly women and children gathered at a Shiite shrine. These unprovoked mass murders have not stirred a single protest in Europe or the Middle East.
Gaza today is basically ground zero for all three of these struggles, said Martin Indyk, the former Clinton administration’s Middle East adviser whose incisive new book, “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was just published. “This tiny little piece of land, Gaza, has the potential to blow all of these issues wide open and present a huge problem for Barack Obama on Day 1.”
Obama’s great potential for America, noted Indyk, is also a great threat to Islamist radicals — because his narrative holds tremendous appeal for Arabs. For eight years Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda have been surfing on a wave of anti-U.S. anger generated by George W. Bush. And that wave has greatly expanded their base.
No doubt, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are hoping that they can use the Gaza conflict to turn Obama into Bush. They know Barack Hussein Obama must be (am)Bushed — to keep America and its Arab allies on the defensive. Obama has to keep his eye on the prize. His goal — America’s goal — has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision. That’s what will serve U.S. interests, moderate the three great struggles and earn him respect.
------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Obama's Middle East 'czar' signals the Lobby's still in charge
Date: Friday, January 9, 2009, 8:00 PM
Justin Raimondo's article (linked below) conveys that Dennis Ross (who is with the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs which is an AIPAC spin-off think tank in D.C.) will be appointed the special envoy to Iran:
January 9, 2009
The Same Old Change
Obama's Middle East 'czar' signals the Lobby's still in charge:
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14019
Former CIA field officer (& Ron Paul's foreign policy advisor) Philip Giraldi discussed Dennis Ross in the following call when he appeared on 'The Liberty Hour' radio broadcast:
Call for Phillip Giraldi about Pretext for War with Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/12/09/call-for-phillip-giraldi-about-pretext-for-war-with-iran.php
Dennis Ross is supportive of military action against Iran:
http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=198
Top Obama Adviser Signs on to Roadmap to War with Iran
New Beltway Debate: What to Do About Iran:
http://tinyurl.com/7wmzr6
Additional at http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:07 pm; edited 8 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:25 pm Post subject: |
| AIPAC associated Israel firsters Martin Indyk & Dennis Ross are in the race to be Obama's point man on the Middle East: Change we can't believe in:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/12/change-we-cant-believe-in.html
Top Obama Adviser Signs on to Roadmap to War with Iran
http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=198
If you haven't seen it already, check out the op-ed by former Sens.
Daniel Coats and Charles Robb in the Washington Post, entitled
"Stopping a Nuclear Tehran." It is the summary of a report issued last
month by an organization called The Bipartisan Policy Center (at whose
website you can find the full report), and it amounts to a roadmap to
war with Iran to which a senior Middle East adviser in the Obama
campaign — namely, Dennis Ross — has apparently signed on.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editorial Observer
New Beltway Debate: What to Do About Iran
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/opinion/03mon4.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1228471693-Fh21tnSuUvQq6ugKlN53vA&pagewanted=print
By CAROL GIACOMO
It is a frightening notion, but it is not just the trigger-happy Bush administration discussing — if only theoretically — the possibility of military action to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Of course, no president or would-be president ever takes the military option off the table, and Barack Obama and John McCain are no exception.
What is significant is that inside Washington’s policy circles these days — in studies, commentaries, meetings, Congressional hearings and conferences — reasonable people from both parties are seriously examining the so-called military option, along with new diplomatic initiatives.
One of the most thorough discussions is in a report by the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, founded by four former senators — the Republicans Robert Dole and Howard Baker and Democrats Tom Daschle and George Mitchell — to devise policy solutions both parties might embrace.
The report warns that the next administration “might have little time and fewer options to deal with this threat.” It explores such strategies as blockading Iran’s gasoline imports, but it also says that “a military strike is a feasible option and must remain a last resort.”
Its authors include Dennis Ross, top Mideast adviser to Mr. Obama, and former Senator Dan Coats, a McCain adviser.
Ashton Carter, a senior Pentagon official in the Clinton administration, wrote a paper for the Center for a New American Security, a prestigious bipartisan think tank, that asserts military action must be seen as only one component of a comprehensive strategy, “but it is an element of any true option.”
Access the following URLs for additional about Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross who are both associated with AIPAC and AIPAC's spin-off think tank (the Washington Report for Near East Policy - WINEP):
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/12/david-pollack-washington-institute-for.html
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/6dp7hj
Obama and the Danger of his Middle East Policies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4bmAsq2ZY0&feature=PlayList&p=8E6947B47093E6FF&index=0&playnext=1
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/6yu8zc
Call for Phillip Giraldi about Pretext for War with Iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxCDBn0g5PE&feature=PlayList&p=58909AA4FCFDB567&index=0&playnext=1
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/5vvxb9
A Perfect Storm? Obama and the Zionist Power Configuration
Edmund Connelly
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.com/authors/Connelly-Obama.html
November 16, 2008
Understandably, many Americans had hoped that the incoming Obama administration would institute the promised changes away from the Bush policies of war and economic turmoil that have become so wearily familiar. That such hopes were misplaced is already clear.
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:26 pm; edited 2 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:17 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=13909
Will Obama End Pay-to-Play in MidEast Policy?
by Grant F. Smith
The incoming Obama administration is scrambling to distance
itself from the scandal emanating from the president-elect's
home state. It is still too early to tell how much Illinois Gov.
Rod Blagojevich's alleged attempt to sell the president-elect's
Senate seat in exchange for $1 million may taint Obama
advisers. But we may soon discover the answer to a larger
question. Is pay-to-play going to be the modus operandi for
Obama's Middle East policy appointments?
Two former Clinton administration officials, Dennis Ross and
Martin Indyk, may provide the answer. They have recently been
energized by Hillary Clinton's nomination as secretary of state,
and both are attempting to stage a comeback. Absent any
record of accomplishment--policy or electoral--Ross and
Indyk have always counted on a presidential nod for influence.
When placed alongside Bill Clinton's auctioneering of the
levers of power, Blagojevich's does not seem particularly
corrupt. Blagojevich at least evidenced a modicum of patriotism
by limiting his sale of positions to U.S. nationals. Bill Clinton
and the Democratic National Committee squeezed more
cash out of the Israel lobby for highly sensitive appointments
than Blagojevich would have ever dreamed possible. Clinton
received the highest bid from Israeli-American media
entrepreneur and American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) super-donor Haim Saban.
Saban was famously quoted by the New York Times on
Sept. 5, 2004, saying, "I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is
Israel." Saban played a decisive role in shaping Clinton policy
through his largesse to AIPAC and the Democratic Party and
his subsidization of a stable of appointees-in-waiting. Saban
hosted a $3.5 million fundraiser for Democrats during Bill
Clinton's presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush.
Saban was so anxious to maintain his lead donor influence
with the Democratic Party that when he learned another donor
had topped his contributions by a quarter-million dollars, he
immediately sent the DNC a $1 bill clipped to a $250,000 check.
Saban served on President Clinton's Export Council advising
the White House. But Saban really made his mark pulling
strings for former AIPAC lobbyist Martin Indyk's installation as
U.S. ambassador to Israel in 1995. This was no easy feat.
As a foreign national, Indyk first had to receive rush preferential
naturalization to become a citizen eligible to serve as a U.S.
ambassador. Indyk's overshadowing accomplishment while
in Israel was having his security clearances revoked for
mishandling classified information.
Indyk's lack of achievements for the American people were
exceeded only by Clinton appointee Dennis Ross' failures
as Middle East envoy during critical peace negotiations.
Ross' biases manifested themselves in his utter failure to
push for a fair and contiguous territory for Palestinians. This
earned the American team a revealing nickname: "Israel's
lawyer." After leaving the Clinton administration, Ross retired
to a think-tank founded by AIPAC board members. Indyk
found a newer and even more influential niche to call home.
In 2002 Haim Saban pledged $13 million to carve the new
Saban Center for Middle East Policy out of the staid old
Brookings Institution. Martin Indyk became its director. In
2003 Brookings was the single most cited think-tank in the
American news media. The Saban Center played a vital public
relations role by creating the illusion of full spectrum political
support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Brookings' exhortations
for war, immortalized by Martin Indyk's essay "Lock and Load,"
assured Americans that Saddam Hussein probably possessed
weapons of mass destruction but that in any case Iraq could
only be neutralized by U.S. military force--if the U.S. moved
quickly enough. Was all of this pay-to-play? Probably, though
not necessarily criminally so. One must fast-forward to the
2008 Obama versus Clinton showdown for the Democratic
Party presidential nomination to find a closer resemblance
to Chicago-machine-style patronage for the highest bidder.
Anxiety again overcame Haim Saban when he offered two
superdelegates at the Young Democrats of America a $1
million contribution to their nonprofit in return for throwing
their support to Hillary Clinton. Four independent witnesses
claimed this crude pay-to-play gambit occurred right before
the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, though Saban
denied it and no criminal charges were ever filed. It is hard
to see the substantive difference between Saban and
Blagojevich, beyond one acting as a president purchaser
and the other as a Senate seller. But there is in fact a much
bigger difference: the Israel lobby 's prosecutorial immunity,
which was institutionalized in secret by the U.S. Justice
Department during the 1960s. From this perspective,
Saban's move can be seen along a much larger continuum
of efforts to secure sensitive Middle East policy posts in order
to steer U.S. policy toward Israeli objectives. Though many
appear to violate the law, few are ever even investigated.
Saban and the Middle East--not Blagojevich and Illinois--
are why this sudden and unexpected law enforcement
intrusion into the quiet realm of pay-to-play matters. The
hapless governor of Illinois enjoys neither Saban's finesse
nor prosecutorial immunity. But Blagojevich's gambit does
direct unwanted attention to larger pay-to-play forces in
continuous operation behind the scenes in Washington.
The scandal may take pressure off Obama to acquiesce
to the subtle but omnipresent mandates of the Israel lobby.
After all, Obama, with his decisive, grassroots-powered win,
doesn't appear to owe Saban or AIPAC's team any political
debts for past services rendered. Like Rahm Emanuel and
to some extent Hillary Clinton, they are but opportunistic
latecomers to Obama's movement. If Emanuel was captured
implicating himself on tape with Blagojevich, he could quickly
become dead weight to the new Camelot. Given the current
spotlight on pay-to-play, a Ross and Indyk comeback in light
of Saban's latest tawdry gambit could begin to weigh on
Obama's most valued personal commodities--credibility
and integrity--and not just the already long-tarnished Middle
East political appointee process.
The stakes could not be higher. Ross has already issued
an error-laden, blustering manifesto that is little more than
a roadmap for U.S. military strikes on Iran. Will the crudest
forms of pay-to-play ultimately win out? If we see Dennis
Ross and Martin Indyk join other AIPAC veterans streaming
into sensitive posts, the answer will be clear.
Link: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=13909
Call for former CIA field officer (and Ron Paul's foreign policy advisor) Philip Giraldi which is linked over at NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM and mentioned Dennis Ross as well:
http://tinyurl.com/5vvxb9 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 2:47 pm Post subject: Dennis Ross and the Outlines of Obama's Emerging Middle East |
| Dennis Ross and the Outlines of Obama's Emerging Middle East Policy
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 4:44 AM
From: "Stephen Sniegoski"
To: "Sniegoski, Stephen"
Dennis Ross and the Outlines of Obama’s Emerging Middle East Policy
Friends,
Obama has appointed Dennis Ross as his special envoy to Iran and overall Middle East “czar.” Outside of the hard-line neocons such as Douglas Feith, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, etc., it would be hard to come up with someone who would be less of an honest broker in the Middle East.
Dennis Ross was Bill Clinton's Middle East envoy where he was somewhat pro-Israel and he seems to have become more of an neocon-oriented Israel Firster since that time. His post-Clinton record includes supporting the pro-Iraq War campaigns of the neocon Project for the New American Century and serving as a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a significant pro-Israel think tank in Washington
Mearsheimer and Walt have described WINEP as ‘part of the core’ of the Israel lobby. In “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” they write:
“Recognizing the need for a prominent but seemingly ‘objective’ voice in the policy area surrounding Israel, former AIPAC president Larry Weinberg; his wife, Barbi Weinberg; AIPAC’s vice president; and AIPAC deputy director of research Martin Indyk founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 1985. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda. Its board of advisors includes prominent pro-Israel figures such as Edward Luttwak, Martin Peretz, Richard Perle, James Woolsey and Mortimer Zuckerman, but includes no one who might be thought of as favoring the perspective of any other country or group in the ‘Near East.’ Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP’s ranks.” (pp. 175-176)
In recent years, Ross also has served on the board of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a think tank that promotes “the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry.”
Significantly, Ross has taken a very hostile position toward Iran Ross helped to produce the 2008 report “Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development,” The report argues that despite Iran’s assurances to the contrary, its nuclear program aims to develop nuclear weapons and is thus a threat to the U.S. This conclusion is contrary to the CIA’s November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran had put its efforts to develop nuclear warheads on hold. Moreover, the report contends that if Iran had nuclear weapons it could not be deterred, like all other countries that have had nuclear weapons, because of its “extremist ideology.”
The report actually calls for the new US president to expand American military forces in the Middle East! This would entail “pre-positioning additional U.S. and allied forces, deploying additional aircraft carrier battle groups and minesweepers, emplacing other war material in the region, including additional missile defense batteries, upgrading both regional facilities and allied militaries, and expanding strategic partnerships with countries such as Azerbaijan and Georgia in order to maintain operational pressure from all directions.” This would seem to represent the neocons wildest dream.
The report goes on to state that if the new administration would hold talks with Iran it should set compliance deadlines which if not met would lead to an American attack on Iran. The military strikes would “have to target not only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.”
Commentator Jim Lobe quite accurately refers to the report as a “roadmap to war,” pointing out that “if Tehran is not eventually prepared to permanently abandon its enrichment of uranium on its own soil—a position that is certain to be rejected by Iran ab initio—war becomes inevitable, and all intermediate steps, even including direct talks if the new president chooses to pursue them, will amount to going through the motions (presumably to gather international support for when push comes to shove.)”
In appointing people like Ross to key roles, is Obama, the presumed proponent of peace, actually preparing for a policy of war in the Middle East?
As Raimondo writes: “With Hillary and Ross at the helm of State, expect prolonged negotiations in the form of a series of ultimatums directed at Tehran, punctuated, perhaps, by a series of incidents, close calls that don't quite spark a war but keep the embers burning. All this drama leading inexorably to a preordained denouement – the third gulf war.”
As I have pointed out in earlier messages, Obama’s image as a proponent of peace would make it easier for him to launch war. His move to war could much more easily be perceived by the public as the only option remaining, in contrast to skepticism that Bush/Cheney would face as known warmongers. Many more liberals and Democrats would support a war launched by Obama than a war launched by a Republican. And conservatives and Republicans would tend to give Obama about as much support for war as they would give to Bush/Cheney or McCain; in fact, many probably would criticize him as moving too slowly toward war.
Now I realize that Obama’s peace supporters have continued to maintain that Obama’s appointment of Middle East hawks represents some sophisticated strategy to achieve peace. Raimondo addresses this argument: “We keep hearing Obama is making all these business-as-usual appointments in order to disarm his critics in advance when he starts taking those really bold initiatives, but doesn't there come a point when that somewhat dubious strategy becomes suspiciously repetitive? Is he really appointing Dennis Ross just so he can usher in a new era of equal justice and sustained peace in the region? Come off it, you Obama-ites – there won't be any change in our foreign policy, except for the worse.”
Anti-war commentator Glenn Greenwald, on other hand, gives limited support to the peace argument (in a longer article that deals with the Rasmussen Poll and the Congress’ resolution on Gaza, which I should have included in the previous email, but include here)
Greenwald writes “Some argue that Obama has filled key positions with politicians who have a history of virtually absolute support for Israeli actions . . . because Obama intends to continue, more or less, the Bush policy of blind support for Israel. Others argue the opposite: that those appointments are necessary to vest the Obama administration with the credibility to take a more active role in pushing the Israelis to a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”
Greenwald writes that he finds the peace theory “marginally more persuasive, but there is simply no way to know until Obama is inaugurated.”
Greenwald doesn’t seem to see the need to provide much evidence here. Obviously, no one can definitely “know” what will happen in the future. However, by looking at past events one gets a better understanding of what will probably happen in the future—probability not certainty. This is simply how people plan for the future.
Now we can only judge Obama by what he has done so far.. From past experience it would seem that an administration’s policy is largely shaped by high-placed policy advisors . By selecting pro-Israeli hawks such as Ross, Obama has guaranteed that the Iranians will be suspicious, and probably non-cooperative, as illustrated in the following article from the Washington Times. The same could probably be said for the Palestinians.
Since the US has been anything but an honest broker in the Middle East, one would think it would be more important to calm the suspicions of the Iranians and the Palestinians than to soothe the Israelis. Putting people such as Ross at the helm would tend to confirm Iranian suspicions that the US did not intend to deal with them fairly, thus precluding the chance for diplomatic agreement, and opening the door for more forceful action, even war against Iran because of its failure to co-operate, as Dennis Ross’ recent study advocates.
Now, Obama might not intend this. He might reasonably believe that for political reasons he has to please the Israel Lobby. He might think he can overcome the views of the hawks he has surrounded himself with. He might view himself as a genius who can devote himself to multiple serious issues—especially the economy—and still outfox representatives of the Israel Lobby on Middle East policy (who are experts on the subject, with multiple significant ties to Israel, and are devoting all their time to the issue) and establish a policy contrary to theirs and force them to carry it out properly. It is hard to think of an American leader who did something comparable this or how it could be done. Most American presidents are highly influenced by their advisors—Washington/Hamilton, Wilson/Lansing and House, Nixon and Ford/Kissinger, Elder Bush/Baker, Younger Bush/Cheney and the neocons. And when American presidents don’t adhere to the views of a particular advisor/advisors and it is because they have significant advisors with contrary views. These counterweights in Middle East policy have yet to been seen in Obama’s emerging administration. .
The only partial exception to my argument was Bill Clinton, who in his second term surrounded himself with some pro-Israel hawks such as Madeleine Albright. Albright and other hawks, plus the hawkish media, did get Clinton involved in the war on Serbia over Kosovo, but Clinton would only go part way (largely bombing civilians) and did not commit ground troops. And he would only fire some missiles at Saddam, though maintaining the blockade and the no-fly zones. So in a way, Bill Clinton, the consummate conman, was able to avoid the war policies of some of his leading advisors, keeping in mind the thinking of his mentor Senator J. William Fulbright,* but his policies certainly did not establish long-term peace. Moreover, Clinton did not have to confront the serious government decisions facing Obama, who must deal with the economic meltdown, which could make or break his administration. So even to achieve results of the Clintonian level, Obama would have to be a far more able manipulator of people than Bill Clinton.
*J. William Fulbright was not only a major opponent of the US war policy in Southeast Asia and overall American military intervention, but was a critic of the Israel Lobby, saying "Israel controls the United States Senate. Around 80 percent are completely in support of Israel; anything Israel wants it gets. Jewish influence in the House of Representatives is even greater.” in CBS Face the Nation on April 15, 1973. In 1974 Fulbright suffered defeat in the Democratic primary election, due in large part to the Israel Lobby. Fulbright had been head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1959.
______________________________________________
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14019
January 9, 2009
The Same Old Change
Obama's Middle East 'czar' signals the Lobby's still in charge
by Justin Raimondo
The news that Dennis Ross will be appointed the special envoy to Iran – and, more, that he will function as a Middle East "czar" – is "staggeringly bad news," as Philip Weiss so trenchantly put it. The appointment, Weiss avers, is "illustrative of the fact that neoconservatism by one of its more amenable names is still in our lives, and the Israel lobby is a big component of the Establishment. Dennis Ross, who pushed the settlements in '92. Dennis Ross, who moved from party to party with indifference, because he had a bigger power than party behind him. ...A friend says that Dennis Ross in Arabic means, Expletive you!"
The appointment, and it is a prominent one, is no surprise to my regular readers, who were warned last summer of what a Ross in this position would have to mean:
"The appointment of Dennis Ross as[Obama's pre-election] principal Middle East adviser is good news for the War Party, specifically for that crucial branch of it that specializes in promoting Israel's ambitions over America's national interests.
"No matter which president Ross worked for, Democrat or Republican – and he's worked for both – his interventionist agenda and his sympathy for the interests of a certain Middle Eastern nation were no secret. His sympathy, too, for poor, persecuted Scooter Libby prompted him to endorse that convicted felon's defense fund. And he was right in there with Bill Kristol and the Project for a New American Century in agitating for war with Iraq.
In a future Obama administration, the so-called liberal hawks will have their chief factotum in Ross."
In short, Ross represents what Leon Hadar described as "neoconservatism with a smiling Democratic face." He will serve under Hillary Clinton, at State, which is looking to be the locus of the Lobby's power base. The question is: will a rival locus of power coalesce elsewhere, perhaps at the National Security Council, or within the military? The CIA under Leon Panetta looks like its going to be awfully partisan, whatever that may come to mean in foreign policy terms in the coming years.
We keephearing Obama is making all these business-as-usual appointments in order to disarm his critics in advance when he starts taking those really bold initiatives, but doesn't there come a point when that somewhat dubious strategy becomes suspiciously repetitive? Is he really appointing Dennis Ross just so he can usher in a new era of equal justice and sustained peace in the region? Come off it, you Obama-ites – there won't be any change in our foreign policy, except for the worse. Just remember: you were warned.
This is not to say that progress isn't being made in this field: it just isn't at the policymaking level, as yet, unless, as I hope – but I'm not counting on it – a locus of opposition develops elsewhere in the administration. In any case, intellectually the Lobby is on the defensive. A great awakening has taken place among foreign policy analysts, and concerned citizens. What we're seeing is a rebellion against our Israel-centric foreign policy and public pronouncements, a stance that is more and more at odds with our authentic national interests. In the vanguard of this intellectual glasnost are the two most prominent "realists" in foreign policy wonk-dom, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
The free flow of thought and discussion that has been engendered by this heartless military operation in Gaza has given rise to a number of thought experiments – analogies in which, for one example, the historic roles are reversed, and the Israelis become the Palestinians. As Professor Walt writes in his new blog at Foreign Policy magazine:
"Imagine that Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had won the Six Day War, leading to a massive exodus of Jews from the territory of Israel. Imagine that the victorious Arab states had eventually decided to permit the Palestinians to establish a state of their own on the territory of the former Jewish state. (That's unlikely, of course, but this is a thought experiment). Imagine that a million or so Jews had ended up as stateless refugees confined to that narrow enclave known as the Gaza Strip. Then imagine that a group of hardline Orthodox Jews took over control of that territory and organized a resistance movement. They also steadfastly refused to recognize the new Palestinian state, arguing that its creation was illegal and that their expulsion from Israel was unjust. Imagine that they obtained backing from sympathizers around the world and that they began to smuggle weapons into the territory. Then imagine that they started firing at Palestinian towns and villages and refused to stop despite continued reprisals and civilian casualties.
"Here's the question: would the United States be denouncing those Jews in Gaza as "terrorists" and encouraging the Palestinian state to use overwhelming force against them?
"Here's another: would the United States have even allowed such a situation to arise and persist in the first place?"
Yes, the dam is really breaking, intellectually. More prominent voices are being raised, demanding a thoroughgoing re-examination of the basic assumptions of US policy in a very turbulent and politically significant region of the world. One that has a direct impact on American politics in a way that, say, US actions in South Asia, Africa, or South and Central America normally would not.
The realists aren't alone in their experimentalism. Weiss reports on a conference call in which Daniel Levy, of the New America Foundation, said:
"We all hear, oh, the U.S. would do the same thing if Canada or Mexico were firing rockets at us. We would have a duty to respond. And yes, I think, Israel has a duty to respond, Levy said.
"But then he went on to explode that analogy, and get at the core issue: Lack of Political Sovereignty. Canada and Mexico are states. Palestinians have no state. Remember, he said, that Gaza is just 4 percent of the Palestinian territories. The other 96 percent are still occupied. They have been for 40 years. And imagine that the 4 percent had been under siege, since they were unoccupied 3 years ago. And the occupied parts were crisscrossed with checkpoints and colonies.
"Would it really be that surprising if in Canada or Mexico there was a hardline opposition that took over the government? And was deeply opposed to the occupier? 'I'll leave that to your imagination.'"
This is responded to with the usual invective: I'll only note that David Rothkopf just can't help himself from going all the way and dragging the specter of Iran into his argument – this being the Lobby's ultmate target. They'll stay on message for as long as it takes the Obama administration to lay the groundwork for a conflict with Iran.
With Hillary and Ross at the helm of State, expect prolonged negotiations in the form of a series of ultimatums directed at Tehran, punctuated, perhaps, by a series of incidents, close calls that don't quite spark a war but keep the embers burning. All this drama leading inexorably to a preordained denouement – the third gulf war.
No, it isn't inevitable, but, given present trends, it's all too likely a scenario, one that won't be stopped unless the revolution in foreign policy thinking reaches the halls of government. I'd be personally delighted to see such a development, and I empathize with those Obama voters and supporters who were hoping for change in this area, but I must confess I see no sign of it. Indeed, the evidence points in the opposite direction. Neoconservatism without Bush, without Cheney, and without the GOP – can a parasitic organism long exist without a host? It looks like the neocons have found a new home in the Obama administration, where they're settling in quite comfortably, and acting as if they owned the place. And maybe they do ….
This time around, however, they're going to have a much harder time of it. The tragic history of the past eight years has given rise to a growing network of groups such as "J Street," in addition to lots of dissent from the conventional pro-Israel wisdom in the liberal-left blogosphere – e.g., Glenn Greenwald, who has a scintillating critique of the media bias that permeates the "mainstream" when it comes to Israel, and certainly Philip Weiss, who has done much to extend the boundaries of the permissible when it comes to Israel and the problem posed by the power of its American lobby. Katrina vanden Heuvel has been a rare voice of reason, and there's life over at The Nation yet. Matt Yglesias is another principled voice, added to such old reliables as Alex Cockburn, and, of course, our very own columnists here at Antiwar.com.
Intellectual change precedes political change, and because of this progress often seems imperceptible – even when it's imminent, as such things go. That's why we keep plugging away with our message and with the most honest coverage of the Gaza massacre and its consequences anywhere, constantly updated and comprehensive to a fault.
We couldn't do it without you, our readers, and we appreciate your ongoing financial and intellectual support – especially your letters, which are usually heartfelt, positive, and very often informative. Keep those letters – and contributions – coming. There is every indication that we're winning our fight – but remember, we can't do it without you, our readers and supporters. As the War Party takes us into a new year, rife with fresh opportunities for armed conflict, we know we can count on you to stand by our side and fight the good fight against the same old enemy – albeit one with a different party label, and under a new administration. Change? In the foreign policy realm, and especially in the central arena of the Middle East, it's the same old "change" for sure.
~ Justin Raimondo
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http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/4786.html
Right Web
Dennis Ross
# Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Consultant
# Project for the New American Century: Signatory
# Former U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East
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last updated: October 30, 2008
Dennis Ross is a former U.S. diplomat who has served both Republican and Democratic administrations in negotiations on Middle East peace and other foreign policy issues.1 Although generally considered a political moderate, Ross has been closely associated with a number of neoconservative-led organizations and policy initiatives. A consultant for the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Ross supported the advocacy efforts of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC),2 which played a key role advocating invading Iraq in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also frequently promotes aggressive Mideast policies in his writings and congressional testimony, and regularly teams up with scholars from organizations like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to craft policy approaches toward Tehran’s nuclear program and other issues in the region.3
During the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, Ross was a leading architect of negotiations aimed at resolving conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Several participants in those negotiations criticized Ross for his Israel bias. In their account of the negotiations, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, Daniel Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky cite a number of anonymous officials who were critical of Ross. Said one Arab negotiator, "The perception always was that Dennis [Ross] started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.… He was never looked at … as a trusted world figure or as an honest broker."4 Likewise, a former Clinton administration representative told the authors, "By the end, the Palestinians didn't fully trust Dennis. … [T]hey thought he was tilted too much towards the Israelis."5
Ross’s role in Middle East policy came under renewed scrutiny in 2008 when it was announced that he was advising the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). WINEP was prompted to issue a press release after the New York Times identified Ross as an Obama advisor in March 2008. The press release said, “[Ross] will continue to offer advice on the substantive issues of our foreign and national security policy to the Obama campaign … on a nonexclusive basis. In accordance with our organization's policy on nonpartisanship, Ambassador Ross has not endorsed any presidential candidate.”6
Time magazine reported, “It is somewhat surprising to see Ross emerge as an official member of Obama's team…. When Ross left the State Department in 2000, he was so critical of Yasser Arafat that some friends thought he was considering working for George W. Bush, who cut ties with the late Palestinian leader.”7
Some observers pointed to the ultimate failure of the initiatives crafted by Ross as the most surprising aspect of the Obama campaign’s decision to use him as an adviser. One former Bill Clinton official told Time, "If Obama wants to embody something new that can actually succeed, it's not just a break from Bush that he's going to need, but a break from Clinton."8
From Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton
Ross got his start in high-level policymaking working under Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon during the Jimmy Carter administration, where Wolfowitz headed up a project called the Limited Contingency Study, the results of which, writes author James Mann, “would play a groundbreaking role in changing American military policy toward the Persian Gulf over the coming decades.”9
The study, coauthored by Ross, was aimed at assessing potential vulnerabilities outside of Europe. Under Wolfowitz’s direction, it became the Pentagon’s “first extensive examination of the need for the United States to defend the Persian Gulf.”10 It stated, “We and our major industrialized allies have a vital and growing stake in the Persian Gulf Region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli conflict.” It went onto to assert that if the Soviet Union controlled the Gulf’s oil, it would “probably destroy NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance without recourse to war by the Soviets.” It also assessed whether countries within the region could also threaten to take control of oil fields, specifically Iraq, which the study argued had “become militarily pre-eminent in the Persian Gulf, a worrisome development because of Iraq’s radical-Arab stance, its anti-Western attitudes, its dependence of Soviet arms sales, and its willingness to foment trouble in other local nations.”11
After the election of Ronald Reagan, Wolfowitz became head of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff, where he assembled a team of advisors that included a number of figures who later became closely involved in neoconservative-led campaigns, including Ross, I. Lewis Libby, James Roche, Zalmay Khalilzad, Alan Keyes, and Francis Fukuyama. Discussing this period, Mann points to Ross in arguing that “not everyone on [Wolfowitz’s] staff was a neoconservative. … The fact remained, however, that Wolfowitz’s policy planning staff turned out to be the training ground for a new generation of national security specialists, many of whom shared Wolfowitz’s ideas, assumptions, and interests.”12
Also during the Reagan presidency, Ross “served as director of Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council staff … and as Deputy Director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment,” according to his biography on the website of the Harry Walker Agency,13 a speakers bureau that also promotes, among others, former George W. Bush aide Peter Wehner, the neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, and alarmist antiterror wonk Steven Emerson.
During the administration of George Bush senior, Ross was appointed head of State’s Policy Planning Staff, where “he played a prominent role in U.S. policy toward the former Soviet Union, the unification of Germany and its integration into NATO, arms control negotiations, and the development of the Gulf War coalition.”14 Mann writes that Ross and Wolfowitz, who had been given a post in the Dick Cheney-led Pentagon, were two of the administration’s most vociferous proponents of using the U.S. military to defend Shiite and Kurdish rebellions after the end of the first Gulf War.15
President Bill Clinton appointed Ross as his special envoy to the Middle East. Ross’s Harry Walker bio recounts a number of successes during the period: “As the architect of the peace process, he was instrumental in assisting the Israelis and Palestinians in reaching the 1995 Interim Agreement, and he successfully brokered the Hebron Accord in 1997. He facilitated the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty and intensively worked to bring Israel and Syria together. Mr. Ross has been credited for managing the peace process through periods of crisis and stalemate.”16
But the peace process failed to produce any enduring agreements to the Palestinian situation; Ross endeavored to explain this failure in his 2004 book The Missing Peace. According to New York Times reviewer Ethan Bronner, Ross points to two explanations, “one simple and one messy but no less true or important. The simple answer is that in the end Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was the principal cause of the failure.… The second explanation, the messier one, is that neither side had taken sufficient steps to grasp the needs and neuroses of the other.”17 Although Ross considers Israeli culpability, he appears to emphasize the failures of the Arabs and Palestinians. Ross writes, “The kind of transformation that would make it possible for the Arab world to acknowledge that Israel has needs has yet to take place.” Regarding the United States, Ross writes, ''Our great failing was not in misreading Arafat. Our great failing was in not creating the earlier tests that would have either exposed Arafat's inability to ultimately make peace or forced him to prepare his people for compromise.''18
Ross’s role in the Clinton administration was later assessed by the international relations scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their controversial 2006 paper for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” Mearsheimer and Walt wrote, “During the Clinton Administration … Middle East policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organizations—including Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits there. These men were among President Clinton’s closest advisors at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favored creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel.”19
Ross criticized the paper, telling the New York Sun that it had a “lack of seriousness” and was “masquerading as scholarship.”20
The Post-9/11 Period
During the presidency of George W. Bush, Ross continued his policy work as a consultant to and fellow at WINEP, authoring policy papers, penning op-eds, and providing congressional testimony on Middle East issues. He repeatedly joined forces with neoconservatives, signing open letters for PNAC, advising advocacy groups like United against Nuclear Iran (whose leadership include former CIA director James Woolsey and hawkish weapons proliferation expert Henry Sokolski),21 and joining AEI scholars Michael Rubin and Reuel Marc Gerecht in discussing Mideast policies with their counterparts at the Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute,22 a think tank founded by the American Jewish Committee to serve "as an intellectual bridge between the United States and the European Union." Ross also served on the board of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, an independent think tank that promotes “the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry.”23
In 2006, Ross joined a cast of neoconservatives and foreign policy hawks in supporting the I. Lewis Libby Defense Fund, an initiative aimed at raising money for the disgraced former assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted in connection to the investigation into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name. Ross served on the group’s steering committee along with Fred Thompson, Jack Kemp, Steve Forbes, Bernard Lewis, and Francis Fukuyama.24 The group’s chairman was Mel Sembler, a real estate magnate who serves as a trustee at AEI and has funded the group Freedom’s Watch.
Commenting on his reason for supporting the fund, Ross, who served with Libby under Wolfowitz in the Reagan State Department, said, “He's been a friend of mine for 25 years and I believe in him as a person and that he has a right to defend himself. It's a measure of friendship that you're there when people need you, not just when it's convenient."25
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ross supported the advocacy work of PNAC, a neoconservative-led letterhead group that advocated overthrowing Saddam Hussein in response to the attacks, even if he was not tied to the them.26 Ross signed two PNAC open letters on the situation in post-war Iraq, both published in March 2003. The first of these, “Statement on Post-War Iraq,” was issued on March 19, 2003, the day before the United States began its invasion. The letter argued that Iraq should be seen as the first step in a larger reshaping of the region’s political landscape, contending that the invasion and rebuilding of Iraq could “contribute decisively to the democratization of the wider Middle East.” Other signatories included Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Thomas Donnelly, Joshua Muravchik, and several other core neoconservatives.27
Ross was just one of several so-called liberal hawks who signed the letter. Tom Barry of the International Relations Center counted six of the twenty-three signatories as representing this group: “Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton’s top adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy studies at Brookings.”28 According to Barry, this “clearly demonstrated the willingness of liberal hawks to bolster the neocons’ overarching agenda of Middle East restructuring.”29
In the aftermath of the invasion, Ross—as well as a number of neoconservatives—expressed deep skepticism about the course of the war and the future prospects in Iraq. In 2007 congressional testimony, Ross stated: “The administration was never unified in its purpose or execution. Our assessment was faith-based not reality-based, leaving the Bush administration assuming that everything would fall into place when Saddam was removed, not fall apart. When it fell apart the administration was left without a workable strategy and it has grappled for the last four years with trying to come up with one.”30
However, in critiquing Bush’s Mideast policies, Ross has limited his criticism to issues of implementation, while giving the White House high marks for its objectives. He told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in July 2007: “The larger purpose of the Bush administration has been democratic transformation, believing that ultimately the way to defeat terrorists is to produce democratic governments to replace the oppressive and corrupt regimes that breed anger and alienation throughout much of the Muslim world. Much like in Iraq, the President’s goals are laudable and far-reaching. The problem has been that the president promoted an ambitious agenda of transformation but has presided over an administration that has consistently sought to employ only minimalist means. Trying to get by on the cheap has characterized the administration’s approach whether it was in Iraq or Afghanistan or even on pushing a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”31
Ross’s approach to Iran appears to have grown increasingly belligerent over time. In 2007, he sought to preserve a role for diplomacy in U.S. efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, arguing in congressional testimony: “The Europeans, Japanese, Indians and the Arab Gulf states represent the economic lifeline to Iran. They see the use of force against Iran as worse than an Iran with nuclear weapons. If they thought their current posture of slowly ratcheting up pressures on Iran—and not cutting them off from credit guarantees, new investments, or provision of gasoline—made the use of force more and not less likely might not they change their behavior? Similarly, if the Bush administration offered to join negotiations now with Iran on the nuclear issue in return for these countries cutting the economic lifeline might not they agree to do so?”32
During the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections Ross participated in two study groups aimed at influencing the next president’s policies toward Iran, both of which proposed extremely aggressive approaches. During 2007-2008, Ross acted as the co-convenor of WINEP’s 2008 Presidential Task Force on the Future of U.S.-Israel Relations, which drafted the June 2008 report Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge. The report was signed by a number established Democratic and Republican policy-makers, as well as by a number of leading hawks like James Woolsey, Vin Weber, and James Roche. Several advisers to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama also signed the document: Ross, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, and Richard Clarke.33
Arguing that Iran’s nuclear program "hovers above all other items on the U.S.-Israel agenda,” the WINEP study proposes that the next U.S. president, upon taking office, should immediately initiate a policy forum to discuss options on how to “compel a change in Iranian behavior on the nuclear issue.” Among the items the forum should cover are diplomatic engagement and political and economic pressure, as well as “coercive options (such as an embargo on Iran’s sale of oil or import of refined petroleum products), and preventive military action.”34
The report pleads that “Americans” try to see the Iranian situation from the Israeli perspective, arguing: "Americans should recognize that deterrence is, in Israeli eyes, an unattractive alternative to prevention, because, if deterrence fails, Israel would suffer terribly." The report also assails what is sees as the growing criticism in the United States of the U.S.-Israeli relationship (i.e. the Mearsheimer-Walt paper on the “Israel Lobby”), stating, “"[The] U.S.-Israel relationship has come under unprecedented attack. Some of these critics argue that Israel has manipulated the U.S. government to act counter to the American national interest, which – if properly understood – would see Israel as a liability... We reject that critique."35
Ross also helped produce the 2008 report Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development, which was published by a study group convened by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), a policy group led by several former government officials, including Sen. Daniel Coats (R-IN) and Sen. Charles Robb (D-VA). The lead drafter of the report was AEI’s Michael Rubin, an outspoken proponent of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Other participants included Sokolski; Michael Makovsky, a former aide to Douglas Feith in the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon; Stephen Rademaker, the husband of AEI’s Danielle Pletka who worked under John Bolton in the State Department; and Kenneth Weinstein, CEO of the Hudson Institute.36
The report argues that despite Iran’s assurances to the contrary, its nuclear program aims to develop nuclear weapons and is thus a threat to “U.S. and global security, regional stability, and the international nonproliferation regime,”37 a conclusion that stands in stark contrast to the CIA’s November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran had put its efforts to develop nuclear warheads on hold.38 The report states, “As a new president prepares to occupy the Oval Office, the Islamic Republic’s defiance of its Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards obligations and United Nations Security Council resolutions will be among the greatest foreign policy and national security challenges confronting the nation.” In contrast to many realist assessments of the situation, the report contends that “Cold War deterrence” is not persuasive in the context of Iran’s program, due in large measure to the “Islamic Republic’s extremist ideology.” Thus, even a peaceful uranium enrichment program would place the entire Middle East region “under a cloud of ambiguity given uncertain Iranian capacities and intentions.”39
The report advises that the new U.S. president bolster the country’s military presence in the Middle East, which would include “pre-positioning additional U.S. and allied forces, deploying additional aircraft carrier battle groups and minesweepers, emplacing other war material in the region, including additional missile defense batteries, upgrading both regional facilities and allied militaries, and expanding strategic partnerships with countries such as Azerbaijan and Georgia in order to maintain operational pressure from all directions.” In addition, the new administration should suspend bilateral cooperation with Russia on nuclear issues to pressure it to stop providing assistance to Iran’s nuclear, missile, and weapons programs. And, if the new administration agrees to hold direct talks with Tehran without insisting that the country first cease enrichment activities, it should set a pre-determined compliance deadline and be prepared to apply increasingly harsh repercussions if the deadlines are not met, leading ultimately to U.S. military strikes that would “have to target not only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.”40
Calling the report a “roadmap to war,” Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service wrote, “In other words, if Tehran is not eventually prepared to permanently abandon its enrichment of uranium on its own soil—a position that is certain to be rejected by Iran ab initio—war becomes inevitable, and all intermediate steps, even including direct talks if the new president chooses to pursue them, will amount to going through the motions (presumably to gather international support for when push comes to shove).… What is a top Obama adviser [Dennis Ross] doing signing on to it?”41
In 2007, Ross published Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), described by Publisher’s Weekly as an “avowedly ‘neo-liberal’ rebuke of Bush's unilateralist, ‘faith-based’ foreign policy blundering. Indeed, with its call for virtuoso state craftsmanship and its detailed proposals on everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Iranian nuclear ambitions to relations with China, it could well be Ross's application for the 2009 secretary of state opening.”42
_________________________________________________________________
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/04/1001985/ross-hamas-cant-be-allowed-to-rebuild
Ross: Hamas cannot be allowed to rebuild
January 4, 2009
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Dennis Ross said the United States should back a cease-fire in Gaza only if it ensures that Hamas "can't rebuild."
"We want some stability," said Ross, a former top Middle East negotiator in the Clinton administration, in a talk at Temple Beth Ami in Rockville, Md.
"If Hamas is left with the capability to rearm," he said, then the current conflict will have been "just a prelude" to the next round. He hoped that some sort of "enforcement mechanisms" to restrain the terrorist group could be developed in any kind of truce.
Ross, a counselor and distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said achieving an Israeli-Palestinian agreement now would be much different than his last attempt in 2000. Not only is the Palestinian Authority divided and much weaker, he said, but the Israeli public doesn't believe such an agreement is possible.
Israel left Lebanon and Gaza, and in both instances, "things got a whole worse" -- which doesn't provide much confidence about a withdrawal from the West Bank, he said.
Ross' talk was part of a series of programs on Israel at the synagogue and planned before the current Gaza conflict broke out.
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/02/israel/
Glenn Greenwald
Friday Jan. 2, 2009 05:34 EST
More oddities in the U.S. "debate" over Israel/Gaza
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
This Rasmussen Reports poll -- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and (b) the consensus views expressed by America's political leadership. Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin (31-55%). By stark constrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).
It's not at all surprising, then, that Republican leaders -- from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine, from talk radio and Fox News to right-wing blogs and neoconservative journals -- are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they're expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.
Much more notable is the fact that Democratic Party leaders -- including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as lockstep in their blind, uncritical support for the Israeli attack, in their absolute refusal to utter a word of criticism of, or even reservations about, Israeli actions. While some Democratic politicians who are marginalized by the party's leadership are willing to express the views which Democratic voters overwhelmingly embrace, the suffocating, fully bipartisan orthodoxy which typically predominates in America when it comes to Israel -- thou shalt not speak ill of Israel, thou shalt support all actions it takes -- is in full force with this latest conflict.
Is there any other significant issue in American political life, besides Israel, where (a) citizens split almost evenly in their views, yet (b) the leaders of both parties adopt identical lockstep positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real voice? More notably still, is there any other position, besides Israel, where (a) a party's voters overwhelmingly embrace one position (Israel should not have attacked Gaza) but (b) that party's leadership unanimously embraces the exact opposite position (Israel was absolutely right to attack Gaza and the U.S. must support Israel unequivocally)? Does that happen with any other issue?
Equally noteworthy is that the factional breakdown regarding Israel-Gaza mirrors quite closely the factional alliances that arose with regard to the Iraq War. Just as was true with Iraq, one finds vigorous pro-war sentiment among the Dick Cheney/National Review/neoconservative/hard-core-GOP crowd, joined (as was true for Iraq) by some American liberals who typically oppose that faction yet eagerly join with them when it comes to Israel. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world -- Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East, the U.N. leadership -- opposes and condemns the attack, all to no avail. The parties with the superior military might (the U.S. and Israel) dismiss world opinion as essentially irrelevant. Even the pro-war rhetorical tactics are the same (just as those who opposed the Iraq War were demonized as being "pro-Saddam," those who oppose the Israeli attack on Gaza are now "pro-Hamas").
Substantively, there are certainly meaningful differences between the U.S. attack on Iraq and the Israeli attack on Gaza (most notably the fact that Hamas really does shoot rockets into Israel and has killed Israeli civilians and Israel really is blockading and occupying Palestinian land, whereas Iraq did not attack and could not attack the U.S. as the U.S. was sanctioning them and controlling their airspace). But the underlying logic of both wars are far more similar than different: military attacks, invasions and occupations will end rather than exacerbate terrorism; the Muslim world only understands brute force; the root causes of the disputes are irrelevant; diplomacy and the U.N. are largely worthless. It's therefore entirely unsurprising that the sides split along the same general lines. What's actually somewhat remarkable is that there is even more lockstep consensus among America's political leadership supporting the Israeli attack on Gaza than there was supporting the U.S.'s own attack on Iraq (at least a few Democratic Congressional leaders opposed the war on Iraq, unlike for Israel's bombing of Gaza, where they virtually all unequivocally support it).
Ultimately, what is most notable about the "debate" in the U.S. over Israel-Gaza is that virtually all of it occurs from the perspective of Israeli interests but almost none of it is conducted from the perspective of American interests. There is endless debate over whether Israel's security is enhanced or undermined by the attack on Gaza and whether the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, expanding West Bank settlements and recent devastating blockade or Hamas militancy and attacks on Israeli civilians bear more of the blame. American opinion-making elites march forward to opine on the historical rights and wrongs of the endless Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict with such fervor and fixation that it's often easy to forget that the U.S. is not actually a direct party to this dispute.
Though the ins-and-outs of Israeli grievances and strategic considerations are endlessly examined, there is virtually no debate over whether the U.S. should continue to play such an active, one-sided role in this dispute. It's the American taxpayer, with their incredibly consequential yet never-debated multi-billion-dollar aid packages to Israel, who are vital in funding this costly Israeli assault on Gaza. Just as was true for Israel's bombing of Lebanon, it's American bombs that -- with the whole world watching -- are blowing up children and mosques, along with Hamas militants, in Gaza. And it's the American veto power that, time and again, blocks any U.N. action to stop these wars.
For those reasons, the pervasive opposition and anger around the world from the Israeli assault on Gaza is not only directed to Israel but -- quite rationally and understandably -- to America as well. Virtually the entire world, other than large segments of the American public, see Israeli actions as American actions. The attack on Gaza thus harms not only Israel's reputation and credibility, but America's reputation and credibility as well.
And for what? Even for those Americans who, for whatever their reasons, want endlessly to fixate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who care deeply and passionately about whether the Israelis or the Palestinians control this or that West Bank hill or village and want to spend the rest of their days arguing about who did what to whom in 1948 and 1967, what possible interests do Americans generally have in any of that, sufficient to involve ourselves so directly and vigorously on one side, and thereby subject ourselves to the significant costs -- financial, reputational, diplomatic and security -- from doing so?
It's one thing to argue that Israel is being both wise and just by bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip. It's another thing entirely to argue that the U.S. should use all of its resources to support Israel as it does so. Those are two entirely separate questions. Arguments insisting that the Gaza attack is good and right for Israel don't mean that they are good and right for the U.S. Yet unstinting, unquestioning American support for whatever Israel does is just tacitly assumed in most of these discussions. The core assumption is that if it can be established that this is the right thing for Israel to do, then it must be the right thing for the U.S. to support it. The notion that the two countries may have separate interests -- that this may be good for Israel to do but not for the U.S. to support -- is the one issue that, above all else, may never be examined.
The "change" that many anticipate (or, more accurately, hope) that Obama will bring about is often invoked as a substance-free mantra, a feel-good political slogan. But to the extent it means anything specific, at the very least it has to entail that there will be a substantial shift in how America is perceived in the world, the role that we in fact play, the civil-liberties-erosions and militarized culture that inevitably arise from endlessly involving ourselves in numerous, hate-fueled military conflicts around the world. Our blind support for Israel, our eagerness to make all of its disputes our own disputes, our refusal to acknowledge any divergence of interests between us and that other country, our active impeding rather than facilitating of diplomatic resolutions between it and its neighbors are major impediments to any meaningful progress in those areas.
UPDATE: One related point: I have little appreciation for those who believe, one way or the other, that they can reliably predict what Obama is going to do -- either on this issue or others. That requires a clairvoyance which I believe people lack.Some argue that Obama has filled key positions with politicians who have a history of virtually absolute support for Israeli actions -- Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel -- because Obama intends to continue, more or less, the Bush policy of blind support for Israel. Others argue the opposite: that those appointments are necessary to vest the Obama administration with the credibility to take a more active role in pushing the Israelis to a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, and that in particular, Clinton would not have left her Senate seat unless she believed she could finish Bill Clinton's work and obtain for herself the legacy-building accomplishment of forging an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians (this morning's NYT hints at that scenario).
I personally find the latter theory marginally more persuasive, but there is simply no way to know until Obama is inaugurated. Whatever else is true, the more domestic political pressure is exerted demanding that the U.S. play a more even-handed and constructive role in facilitating a diplomatic resolution, the more likely it is that this will happen.
UPDATE II: Donna Edwards, the newly elected, netroots-supported Democratic Congresswoman from Maryland, who removed the standard establishment Democratic incumbent Al Wynn from office this year, has the following to say about Israel/Gaza:
I am deeply disturbed by this week's escalation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, as I have been by the ongoing rocket fire into southern Israel. To support Israel and to ease the humanitarian crisis facing the people of Gaza, the United States must work actively for an immediate ceasefire that ends the violence, stops the rockets, and removes the blockade of Gaza.
That's much further than most national Democrats have been willing to go. And it illustrates that primary challenges can -- slowly but meaningfully -- change the face of the Democratic Party.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/11/iranians-short-on-hope-for-change/print/
Washington Times
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Iranians' hope for U.S. policy shift dims
Hadi Nili (Contact)
TEHRAN | President-elect Barack Obama has not yet been inaugurated, but some Iranians are already losing their optimism that he will change policy toward Iran after 30 years of estrangement.
An initial groundswell of enthusiasm among some Iranians has been replaced by caution and concern.
"Obama" means "he is with us" in Persian. But an Iranian weekly tabloid recently ran a headline saying "He is not with us."
"Nothing will basically change with Obama," said a foreign editor for one of Iran's most prominent newspapers, who asked that only his first name, Reza, be used. "He is one of them; someone from the system, despite his slogans."
The reported choice last week of Dennis Ross as the Obama administration's Iran coordinator also is likely to be unpopular in the Iranian government. Mr. Ross is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that Iranians regard as extremely close to Israel. Israel has described Iran's nuclear program, which Iran maintains is for peaceful purposes only, as a threat.
Keyhan, a hard-line newpaper close to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has called Mr. Ross, a former Middle East negotiator, "a Zionist lobbyist in the U.S. administration."
"Iranians have serious misgivings about Dennis Ross because of his close ties to the pro-Israel lobby ... not to mention Ross' recent writings that push for tough actions against Iran while de-prioritizing the Israel-Palestinian issue," said Kaveh Afrasiabi, a former Iranian nuclear-issues negotiator.
During the campaign, Mr. Obama promised to open direct talks with Iran without preconditions. However, foreign-affairs specialists here predict he will focus first on domestic issues, particularly the economic crisis.
"To the extent that Obama is willing to devote energy to Iran, he will certainly consider the issue of how to respond to signals being sent by the current government," said Nasser Hadian, a professor of international relations at Tehran University and a former lecturer at Columbia University in New York. "This will certainly take time, and he is in no hurry to respond to a request for talks."
Mr. Ahmadinejad, like many other Iranians, publicly expressed doubts before the election that a black man could win the presidency. However, after the Nov. 4 vote, the Iranian leader sent the president-elect a letter of congratulations, which also reminded Mr. Obama of his "chance for change, which is given to him by the vote of American citizens."
As the first letter sent by an Iranian official to an American president-elect, the contact was reported by Iranian official media as a letter of "admonition," ignoring the first sentence which congratulated Mr. Obama.
The letter was criticized by several rivals of the president, including fellow hard-liners Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, and Ahmad Tavakoli, head of the parliament's committee on international affairs.
However, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformer who headed former President Mohammad Khatami's office during the first years of the Khatami government, welcomed the gesture, even though he has ridiculed Mr. Ahmadinejad in the past.
Mr. Abtahi wrote in his blog that sending such a letter was "a brave act" by Mr. Ahmadinejad and that he hoped the president would continue "such innovations."
Mr. Obama has yet to reply to the letter. Asked about it at a news conference, he repeated calls for Iran to suspend its uranium-enrichment program.
While Mr. Ahmadinejad has reached out to Mr. Obama, there has been no such gesture from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric who has been Iran's supreme leader since 1989. He has the final say on foreign and defense policies of Iran.
The ayatollah's last public remarks regarding the U.S. election were in late October. He said that Iran-U.S. problems are "deep" and not something that could change or be repaired "when someone comes to office or leaves it."
However, Mr. Ahmadinejad almost certainly cleared his intention to send Mr. Obama a letter with the supreme leader.
Other influential figures in Iran have expressed disappointment that Mr. Obama has repeated Bush administration demands for Iran to suspend its nuclear program.
Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said recently at Friday prayers in Tehran that Mr. Obama was to blame for "repeating Bush's mistakes about Iranian nuclear activities."
Some observers here worry that Mr. Ahmadinejad might try to exploit any opening in U.S.-Iran relations to gain votes in June presidential elections. However, specialists such as Tehran University's Mr. Hadian doubt there will be a breakthrough within the next six months.
Mr. Obama will wait to deal with Iran "because of his unfamiliarity with foreign policy, the financial crisis in America and the problems he faces in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq," Mr. Hadian said.
The U.S. election campaign aroused enormous interest in Iran - more than any previous foreign vote - and even the official Islamic Republic Broadcasting system aired extensive coverage of the campaign and the results.
But ordinary citizens in Tehran, speaking in the aftermath of the elections, said they were pessimistic about how different the new U.S. president would be.
A supermarket owner in his 50s, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Saeid, pointed to the television set in his shop in northern Tehran that showed Palestinians killed and injured by Israel's offensive in Gaza.
"[Mr. Obama] has not said anything about such a massacre," Saeid said. "How could I count on him to consider my situation as a poor Iranian and suspend trade bans on the aviation industry of my country or to let us have something which [the Americans] do not like?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Stephen Sniegoski discusses his 'Transparent Cabal' book:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/11/26/dr-stephen-sniegoski-discusses-his-transparent-cabal-book.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 4:38 pm Post subject: |
| George Mitchell's (Un)Fairness in the Middle East
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 7:54 PM
From: "Stephen Sniegoski"
To: "Sniegoski, Stephen"
George Mitchell's (Un)Fairness in the Middle East
Friends,
As one of his first actions, Obama plans to name former senator George J.
Mitchell (D-Maine) as his Middle East envoy, sending a message he intends to
engage the Israelis and Palestinians in efforts to bring about a lasting
peace. Mitchell is of a Lebanese Christian background and holds
traditional establishment foreign policy positions. He headed a committee
on Palestinian-Israeli issues commissioned by Bill Clinton in 2000, which
was intended to save the faltering "peace process." The committee released a
report in 2001, which among other things called upon the Palestinians to
crackdown on terrorism and the Israelis to freeze their settlements in the
occupied territories (freeze, not remove) and to stop shooting unarmed
demonstrators. This was portrayed in the major media as a very balanced
report because it offered criticism of Israel as well as of the
Palestinians. However, the Mitchell Report ignored the fact that that Israel
is an illegal occupying power according to international law. As Stephen
Zunes writes "However, the report refuses to call for Israel's withdrawal
from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees, which
Israel is required to do under UN Security Council resolution 242 and 338,
long considered by the United States and the international community as the
basis for peace."
Zunes continues: "Another problem is that the report calls simply for a
freeze on Israel's illegal settlements in the occupied territories. In
reality, Israel is required to withdraw from those settlements altogether.
According to Article 40 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it is illegal for
an occupying power to transfer its civilian population onto territory seized
by military force. UN Security Council resolutions 446 and 465, adopted
unanimously with U.S. support, call on Israel to withdraw from these
settlements. As long as the settlements remain as part of Israeli territory,
any hope of establishing a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank or
including Arab East Jerusalem as part of that state becomes impossible."
In essence, the Mitchell Report was only "balanced" if one considers the
Israel occupation and settlements to be, at least to some degree,
legitimate, and that in giving up any of its occupied territory, Israel
would be making a concession rather than abiding by international law
(which is how the Palestinians and most of the world see it).
Also revealing that Mitchell might not be fair to the Palestinians is the
fact that he is currently receiving some degree of praise from Steve Rosen,
who was one of the AIPAC officials involved in the Larry Franklin espionage
case.. Rosen was charged with handing over classified information to
Israel. Rosen served for 23 years as one of the top officials of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) As Raimondo writes: "Rosen
was the sparkplug of AIPAC, known for implementing - with notable success -
the powerful lobbying group's efforts to influence the executive branch."
(Raimondo article on Rosen attached)
Rosen now works for Middle East Forum (MEF), a think tank headed by neocon
scholar Daniel Pipes. Rosen is writing a blog hosted on the MEF website
focusing on Obama Administration personnel and policy:
http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/archive.php
Regarding Mitchell, Rosen writes: "To many, he is a prominent symbol of
'evenhandedness,' but he is not regarded as hostile to Israel. As a Senator,
he had many supporters in the pro-Israel community, and he generally favored
legislation important to the U.S.-Israel relationship. He has many friends
among Israel's leaders, and in the American pro-Israel community."
Now when a member of the Israel Lobby par excellence such as Rosen praises
Mitchell, even giving what might be considered partial praise, one has to
wonder. Note that the Israel Lobby never praised James Baker in 2006 when
he served as co-chairman of the "Iraq Study Group." Baker was constantly
attacked by the Israel Lobby as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic and the report
was ignored by the Bush administration.
Now how does one explain Rosen's relative praise. Some might argue that the
Israel Lobby cannot afford to antagonize the popular new president.
However, given Obama's selection of pro-Zionists, and his natural prudence,
I would think that the selection of Mitchell was already vetted by members
of the Israel Lobby and received their approval. Maybe Israeli agent Steve
Rosen knows something we don't know, or at least something the mainstream
media does not care to discuss.
One thing that should be known is that Mitchell is highly respected in
Washington political circles. For six consecutive years he was voted "the
most respected member" of the Senate by a bipartisan group of senior
congressional aides.
People concerned about "respect" in Washington politics must take positions
that do not antagonize groups with media power. This certainly means never
to antagonize the Israel Lobby. And it would be necessary to antagonize the
Lobby in order to allow for the existence of a viable Palestinian state,
since Israel has never voluntarily offered the Palestinians a viable state
in any of the numerous "peace" processes. .
I would think that any US activity as a "peace" broker would only have
Israel make cosmetic changes-abandonment of a few settlements--while keeping
the major settlement blocks, retaining control of water (the West Bank
aquifer) and the boundaries (Jordan River). Also, there would be a number
of Jewish-only roads traversing Palestinian territory. All of this would be
claimed necessary to maintain Israeli security-which Mitchell has pledged to
defend.
Such a Israeli "peace" offer could be portrayed by the US media as
"balanced" so that the Palestinians' rejection would be interpreted as
showing how incorrigibly obstinate they are and justify any type of harsh
treatment by Israel. Considering how many people are absolutely enthralled
with Obama, public opinion in the US, and even in the world at-large(outside
the Middle East) would be far more favorable toward the Obama
administration's Middle East policy than it had been toward Bush/Cheney
policy, even if the two policies were quite similar.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/19/AR2009011902
726_pf.html
On First Full Day, Obama Will Dive Into Foreign Policy
By Michael D. Shear and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 20, 2009; A12
President-elect Barack Obama will plunge into foreign policy on his first
full day in office tomorrow, finally freed from the constraints of tradition
that has forced him and his staff to remain muzzled about world affairs
during the 78-day transition.
As one of his first actions, Obama plans to name former senator George J.
Mitchell (D-Maine) as his Middle East envoy, aides said, sending a signal
that the new administration intends to move quickly to engage warring
Israelis and Palestinians in efforts to secure the peace.
Mitchell's appointment will follow this afternoon's expected Senate vote to
confirm Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. And tomorrow
afternoon, aides said, Obama will convene a meeting of his National Security
Council to launch a reassessment of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By the end of the week, Obama plans to issue an executive order to
eventually shut down the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, and to lay out a new process for dealing with about 250 detainees
remaining at the prison.
The actions -- to be taken before the entire White House staff has found
their desks -- reflect the frenetic activity among Obama's national security
advisers that has been taking place behind the scenes since Election Day.
Following his noon inauguration, Obama will spend a brief time at the White
House before heading to a series of dinners and inaugural balls. Aides said
the work of being president will begin in earnest tomorrow morning.
That work has already been in full view with regard to the economic crisis
and other domestic issues. Obama has not been bashful, giving speeches and
dispatching aides to work with Congress on an $825 billion stimulus package.
He will meet with economic advisers tomorrow and is expected to quickly
issue an executive order demanding a new level of transparency and ethics in
government.
But the new president will for the first time assume the responsibility for
an Iraq war that he opposed from its inception and a series of international
crises that will quickly test his mettle as commander in chief.
Publicly, the president-elect has deferred to President Bush and has
declined to comment on the recent fighting in the Gaza Strip and the
terrorist attacks in Mumbai. But privately, he and his aides have been
preparing to dramatically reshape the country's foreign policy, starting
with the broad conflict zone from Israel to Pakistan.
Last Thursday, in an interview with Washington Post editors and reporters,
Obama criticized Bush for treating Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as
"discrete" problems. Under his watch, Obama said, policy in that region will
be treated as a single, unified one.
"One of the principles that we'll be operating under is that these things
are very much related and that if we have got an integrated approach, we're
going to be more effective," he said.
Incoming officials were still debating yesterday how involvement in the
Israeli-Palestinian crisis should proceed during the first week. With a
fragile Gaza cease-fire in place, the new administration plans to tread
gingerly, working behind the scenes while allowing Egyptian and European
initiatives to play out before taking a highly visible role.
Obama transition officials are acutely aware that the world -- and
especially the Israelis and Palestinians -- will be watching to see what
tone the new president takes. Sources said the initial emphasis will likely
be on stepped-up presidential engagement rather than the specifics of a U.S.
role, and empathy and aid toward humanitarian suffering.
The first concrete evidence of a new foreign policy approach will begin with
the meeting tomorrow. Obama will instruct the Pentagon to prepare for a
stepped-up withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, to be completed within 16
months, and will hear proposals for turning around the deteriorating war in
Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, will attend, and Gen. David H.
Petraeus, head of Central Command, and Gen. Raymond Odierno, U.S. commander
in Iraq, will weigh in via live video connection.
Senior officers began late last year to prepare options for withdrawing from
Iraq. Obama has said he will listen carefully to their recommendations
before approving a plan that meets his specifications. He has said he
expects to maintain a "residual force" in Iraq but has not indicated how
many troops will remain over what period.
He has also indicated he will move ahead with existing plans for deployment
of as many as 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan this year.
After returning to the White House following his swearing-in today, Obama is
expected to visit the Oval Office, aides said.
A handful of senior staff members will ride in Obama's motorcade to the
White House today and enter their offices for the first time as they brace
to confront the economy, the Middle East, overseas wars and a raft of
domestic policy controversies.
Aides said only about 15 White House staffers were pre-screened to enter the
West Wing today. The rest will arrive tomorrow morning, after partying at
inaugural balls.
Gates will not attend inaugural festivities, having been designated to stay
away from the president and other national leaders in case of a catastrophic
event.
Mitchell, who led a Middle East peace commission in 2000, is highly regarded
as a negotiator for his work in the successful Northern Ireland peace
process. An Obama adviser said the exact timing of Mitchell's appointment
will depend on Clinton's confirmation vote, which is scheduled to take place
by "unanimous consent" and so cannot be stopped by filibuster.
But a Republican senator could demand a voice vote, thus delaying Clinton's
confirmation by another day. "If any Republican holds her over, they are
stalling the entire administration from hitting this problem," the adviser
said.
The Guantanamo order is being crafted by Obama White House Counsel Gregory
B. Craig. Its timing is expected to preempt a Guantanamo trial scheduled to
begin Monday under the current "military commission" proceedings.
Staff writer Anne E. Kornblut contributed to this report.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/314 __
FPIF Commentary
Mitchell Report on Israeli-Palestinian Violence Flawed
Stephen Zunes | May 1, 2001
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Comment on this article
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
The report on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the commission led
by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell is a failed effort--not for what it
includes but for what it does not include.
The report's recognition that the Palestinian Authority needs to do more to
curb violence from the Palestinian side and the call for Israel to end its
widespread use of lethal force against unarmed demonstrators is
self-evident. Yet its failure to call for an international protection force
underscores the commission's unwillingness to support the decisive steps
necessary to actually curb further bloodshed.
The report correctly recognizes that the violence was not solely a result of
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Islamic holy
site of Haram al-Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem last fall and that it
part of a preconceived plan by the Palestinians to launch a violent
struggle. It recognizes that the root of the uprising was in Palestinian
frustrations in the peace process to get their land back, fueled by
unnecessarily violent responses by both sides in the early hours and days of
the fighting. However, the report refuses to call for Israel's withdrawal
from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees, which
Israel is required to do under UN Security Council resolution 242 and 338,
long considered by the United States and the international community as the
basis for peace.
Another problem is that the report calls simply for a freeze on Israel's
illegal settlements in the occupied territories. In reality, Israel is
required to withdraw from those settlements altogether. According to Article
40 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it is illegal for an occupying power to
transfer its civilian population onto territory seized by military force. UN
Security Council resolutions 446 and 465, adopted unanimously with U.S.
support, call on Israel to withdraw from these settlements. As long as the
settlements remain as part of Israeli territory, any hope of establishing a
contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank or including Arab East
Jerusalem as part of that state becomes impossible.
How the violence will end without some promise of the Palestinians being
able to reclaim their land seized by Israel in 1967 is hard to fathom.
Though the report's criticisms of the Palestinian side were well-founded,
and in some respects could have been even stronger, the effort to be
balanced fails to recognized the unbalanced nature of a conflict between an
occupied people and their occupiers. While a balanced perspective which
recognizes that both Israelis and Palestinians have the fundamental right to
live in peace and security is critical, it is wrong to blame the
Palestinians equally to the Israelis when it is their land that is being
occupied, confiscated and colonized and it is their people who are being
denied their fundamental right of national self-determination.
Indeed, this would be like having a "balanced" report blaming both Iraq and
Kuwait during Kuwait's six months under Iraqi control or such a report
blaming both Indonesia and East Timor during that island nation's 24-year
occupation. For whatever the many faults of the Arafat's corrupt and
autocratic Palestinian Authority, their positions on the outstanding issues
of the conflict-settlements, withdrawal from occupied lands, sharing
Jerusalem and the return of refugees-are far more consistent with
international law, UN Security Council resolutions and the consensus of the
international community than are the U.S. or Israeli positions.
In many respects, the mission was flawed from the beginning. Its members
were appointed by the United States, which has been the major financial,
military and diplomatic supporter of Israel's occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza. A truly international committee chosen by the UN Secretary General
or other international leader would have undoubtedly had more credibility,
but the U.S. opposed it.
Another problem was the naming of two former U.S. Senators, George Mitchell
(who headed the panel) and Warren Rudman, both of whom were strong
supporters of Israel's occupation policies while in the Senate, where they
supported billions of dollars worth of economic and military aid to Israeli
occupation forces. They also opposed Palestinian statehood alongside Israel.
Neither senator demonstrated a strong record in support of human rights and
international law in the Middle East or elsewhere, which would seem to be a
fundamental requisite for membership in such a commission.
Such concerns may be moot, however. Despite the bias in the report in its
favor, Israel has already rejected some of the key findings as well as
rejecting Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat's call for a summit based on the
committee's findings. The Bush administration appears unwilling to push
Israel to comply with the committee's recommendations, making even these
modest efforts a wasted exercise.
Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace &
Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.
George Mitchell to be Mideast "Peace" Envoy??
by Steve Rosen
Mon, 19 Jan 2009 at 10:24 AM
http://www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2009/01/mitchell-to-be-mid
east-peace-envoy.html
Elisabeth Bumiller at the NY Times, often well-informed, is reporting that
former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell is the leading candidate to be
Mideast "peace" envoy. I reported on January 7 that "Clinton is torn between
making a high level political appointment of a prominent public official,
like George Mitchell, who might report to the president, or a professional
reporting to her, a counterpart to Dennis Ross or Bill Burns. If she
appoints at the high level, unrealistic expectations may be further inflated
and the issue could spin out of control. But if she appoints at the
professional level, it may be described as disappointing, less than Obama
led the region and the world to expect. Clinton is proceeding very carefully
on this one."
If in fact Mitchell is appointed, it will be taken in the region as a
message that Obama intends to pursue a policy less closely coordinated with
Israel, and less fully under the control of the Secretary of State. Mitchell
is of partly Lebanese descent, and was brought up as a Maronite Catholic. To
many, he is a prominent symbol of "evenhandedness," but he is not regarded
as hostile to Israel. As a Senator, he had many supporters in the pro-Israel
community, and he generally favored legislation important to the U.S.-Israel
relationship. He has many friends among Israel's leaders, and in the
American pro-Israel community.
He is best remembered in the Mideast for the Commission he headed in
2000-2001, which called for a freeze on Israeli settlements and a
Palestinian crackdown on terrorism. Its final statement, known as the
"Mitchell Report," very strongly emphasized Israel's legitimate security
interests. But it received more press attention for its conclusion that
Israel "should freeze all settlement activity, including the 'natural
growth' of existing settlements...The kind of security cooperation desired
by [Israel] cannot for long coexist with settlement activity." Daniel Pipes
dissected the report in the Washington Times, particularly its studious
neutrality between the perpetrators of terrorist acts and those trying to
defend themselves. But it should also be noted that then-Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon accepted the Mitchell Report as a basis for
negotiations. Much of the report was drafted by Fred Hof of Armitage
Associate, who may re-emerge if Mitchell is appointed.
The concept of a freeze on "natural growth" of settlements is opposed in
Israel not only by the Likud, but also is rejected by the leadership of the
Labor Party and most other Zionist parties. Israeli governments have at
times accepted a freeze on the construction of new settlements, and on the
geographic expansion of existing settlements. But they have reserved the
right to continue what Shimon Peres called "vertical growth", such as adding
a room to an existing home or building a new home inside the geographic
perimeter of the existing "construction line" of an established settlement.
Also, Israelis generally distinguish between construction inside the
settlement "blocs" that are expected to remain under Israel sovereignty as
part of a territorial compromise, versus settlements expected to be outside
the blocs. The Bush Administration gave some recognition to these
distinctions, albeit with reluctance and inconsistently. In 2004, Israeli
and American technical teams worked with Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer to review
aerial photos of settlements and "jointly define the construction line" in
each one, to define agreed-upon areas where construction might be allowed.
But the Mitchell Report did not acknowledge any of these distinctions.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13819
November 28, 2008
Now I've Seen Everything
A spy goes to work for a thinktank
by Justin Raimondo
Of course there's nothing all that unusual about a spy going to work for a
Washington thinktank. Ex-CIA employees do it all the time: so do all sorts
of other spooks, who would otherwise be haunting the world's darkest
corners. No big deal. But what I've never seen, and don't recall ever
hearing about, is the spectacle of a spy for a foreign country being hired
by any organization that hopes to influence U.S. foreign policy. Well,
here's one for the record books: the Middle East Forum has hired Steve
Rosen, once the head of policy development for the America Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen is accused of stealing highly classified
information from the U.S. government and passing it on to Israeli government
officials.
Rosen was the sparkplug of AIPAC, known for implementing - with notable
success - the powerful lobbying group's efforts to influence the executive
branch. The very effective modus operandi of this behind-the-scenes wheeler
dealer was summed up by his reported comment that:
"A lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the
sun."
Slinking about in the shadows, Rosen and his sidekick Keith Weissman - an
Iran expert - cultivated one Larry Franklin, the Pentagon policy
department's top Iran analyst, and pried top secret intelligence from him,
including information on al Qaeda, the Khobar Towers terrorist attack, and
Iranian armaments. Before the FBI descended on him, Franklin had been
passing information to the AIPAC espionage team for over a year, planning to
advance his career using the influential lobby as his sponsor: he hoped for
a spot on Bush's National Security Council. In return, he gave his handlers
access to some of America's most closely guarded secrets. When FBI agents
finally paid him a visit, he led them to a treasure trove of stolen top
secret dossiers kept in his Alexandria,0 Virginia home - a veritable library
of classified information, 83 documents in all, spanning three decades.
The arrest was prefigured by two FBI raids on AIPAC headquarters in
Washington: federal law enforcement descended on the building early in the
morning, without warning, surrounded the place and carted away loads of
evidence. Four AIPAC officials were handed subpoenas.
Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in a federal prison
and a $10,000 fine, agreeing to testify for the prosecution. Rosen and
Weissman pleaded innocent, and their top-flight lawyers have kept pretrial
maneuvering ongoing for four years this past August. Their very effective
method: greymail. Apparently, the purloined information is so sensitive that
it cannot be revealed without compromising America's national security
interests in a major way: the defense has delayed the trial by insisting
that all this information be discussed in open court, or else the defendants
will not be able to get a fair hearing.
What is amazing about this case isn't just the long delay in the legal
proceedings, but the brazenness of the accused: they openly proclaim their
guilt - that is, they admit to the actions detailed in the indictment -
while maintaining that they did absolutely nothing wrong. Spying? Who - us?
Why, we were just exercising our "First Amendment rights" like any
journalist out to get a scoop.
With one big difference, though: legitimate journalists don't report their
findings - classified sensitive purloined information - to the intelligence
agencies of foreign nations.
The contempt the defendants and their lawyers have for the very concept of
American national security permeates this case like a bad smell, and is
enough to make any patriot - heck, any ordinary American - sick to his or
her stomach. To give some further indication of the unsavory flavor of this
case, I'll only note the latest wrinkle: in a recent court session, defense
lawyers argued that the information their clients are accused of stealing
was already known to the Israelis. This has been another of what I call the
"chutzpah defense" mounted by Rosen and Weissman's legal team: the Israelis
don't need to steal our secrets, they aver, because they already know
everything worth knowing anyway. As Josh Gerstein, a former writer for the
now-permanently-setNew York Sun, puts it on his blog:
"Both sides in the case seemed to agree that if information came from
Israel, even if it passed through U.S. Government hands, it could not be a
basis for the charges against Rosen and Weissman. That seemed puzzling,
since the mere fact that information came from a foreign government is
usually a good enough reason to get it classified."
The government has gone easy on the AIPAC defendants, and their former
employers. An apparent attempt was made by some in the Justice Department to
indict not only Rosen and Weissman, but AIPAC itself. This was quashed by
the chief prosecutor, Paul J. McNulty - who has since gone on to graze in
greener pastures - and the case was limited from the outset: only Franklin,
Rosen, and Weissman were charged.
As Grant F. Smith shows in his recent book, AIPAC's organizational
forerunner as Israel's Capitol Hill amen corner - the AZC, American Zionist
Council - was financed almost entirely by overseas sources, i.e. Israel, and
yet was not required to register as an agent of a foreign government.
Particularly fascinating is his original research into the findings of
Senator J. William Fulbright, remembered today as an acerbic critic of the
Vietnam war, who investigated and uncovered financial conduits running from
Israeli government agencies to AIPAC in its AZC incarnation.
Everybody knows AIPAC is indeed an agent of a foreign government, i.e. the
Israelis. What most don't know, however, is that, unlike all others, it is
exempt from complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This
immunity - the legal genesis of which Grant traces in his fascinating
account - created an opening for the Israeli government and its various
overseas agencies to act with impunity within our borders. This includes not
just advocacy, but also providing the organizational mask behind which
intelligence-burglars like Rosen, Weissman, and god-knows-who-else are
hiding.
AIPAC quickly threw Rosen and Weissman overboard, the apparent price for
avoiding a wider prosecution, and Rosen's quest to reemerge found limited
sympathy on his old stomping grounds, the Washington policy wonk circuit.
The Forwardreports:
"Rosen has been looking for his way back to the foreign policy scene for a
long while, but he found that in most cases, doors of think tanks and
advisory groups were closed. "They'd pat me on my back and say it is not
fair, but there are only a few that agree to stand up," Rosen said, praising
the Middle East Forum for 'having the courage' to reach out to him."
While the presumption of innocence is obligatory in a narrow legal sense,
one has only to read the indictment to see that Rosen and Weissman not only
stole classified information, but knew perfectly well they were breaking the
law, and went to great pains to avoid detection. At one point, the
indictment has the defendants shifting meeting locations three times, going
from restaurant to restaurant in the clear knowledge that they were likely
being followed. Document exchanges were avoided: Franklin briefed his
handlers verbally. Recordings of these conversations are the core of the
government's case, and their substance is highly sensitive. Wrangling over
what to play in open court has delayed the trial for four years. In playing
for time, the defense is hoping that the incoming administration will rein
in the Justice Department and quash the case, and there is good reason to
suspect that this is true.
In any case, what kind of a public policy organization would hire Rosen, in
hopes of influencing U.S. foreign policy? The Middle East Forum is a
hate-the-Muslims "educational" organization, run by Daniel Pipes. Pipes and
his pals have followed the time-honored traditions of smear artists
everywhere in maintaining an academic blacklist, "Campus Watch," which keeps
tabs on college professors deemed insufficiently friendly to Israeli
government policies. Pipes believes a "substantial" number of American
Muslims are plotting to overthrow the government and establish an Islamist
theocracy in America, and that this represents a real threat: it's all
downhill from there. In one of his recent screeds, Pipes attacks Barack
Obama for his supposed "links" to ... Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy's
assassin. Yikes.
M. J. Rosenberg, blogging at Talking Points Memo, asks: "Are these people
crazy?" and concludes they're "crazy/irrelevant rather than
crazy/dangerous," and yet Rosen wielded enormous influence in Washington, at
one point. Jeffrey Goldberg, over at the New Yorker, relates a conversation
with Rosen:
"He pushed a napkin across the table. 'You see this napkin?' he said. 'In
twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this
napkin.'"
Rosen may have personally fallen on hard times, having to take up with a
loony like Pipes, but one has to remember that the organizational framework
that spawned his treason is not only alive and well - but it could still
deliver those 70 senatorial signatures on a napkin with the greatest of
ease.
Crazy, yes - and dangerous, too.
~ Justin Raimondo
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Copyright 2008 Antiwar.com
Israel Attacks Gaza, Silence from Mainstream Media about Israeli Violations of International Law
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