Iraq, Israel, Iran

When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's article on the Israel Lobby appeared in the London Review of Books, after having been commissioned and killed by the Atlantic Monthly, neoconservative publicists launched an all-out campaign to slander the authors as anti-Semites. Now that their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has appeared--a work of considerable scope, carefully documented, and not just an expanded version of the article--the imputation of anti-Semitism will doubtless be repeated more sparingly for readers lower down the educational ladder. Meanwhile, the literate establishment press will (a) ignore it, (b) pretend that it says nothing new or surprising, and (c) rule out the probable inferences from the data, on the ground that the very meaning of the word "lobby" is elusive.

The truth is that many new facts are in this book, and many surprising facts. By reconstructing a trail of meetings and public statements in 2001-2002, for example, the authors show that much of the leadership of Israel was puzzled at first by the boyish enthusiasm for a war on Iraq among their neoconservative allies. Why Iraq? they asked. Why now? They would appear to have obtained assurances, however, that once the "regime change" in Iraq was accomplished, the next war would be against Iran.

A notable pilgrimage followed. One by one they lined up, Netanyahu, Sharon, Peres, and Barak, writing op-eds and issuing flaming warnings to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was a menace of world-historical magnitude. Suddenly the message was that any delay of the president's plan to bomb, invade, and occupy Iraq would be seized on by "the terrorists" as a sign of weakness. Regarding the correct treatment of terrorists, as also regarding the avoidance of weakness, Americans look to Israelis as mentors in a class by themselves.

So a war projected years before by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz--a war secured at last by the fixing of the facts around the policy at the Office of the Vice President--was allowed to borrow some prestige at an intermediate stage by the consent of a few well-regarded Israeli politicians. Yet their target of choice had been Iran. They accepted the change of sequence without outward signs of doubt, possibly owing to their acquaintance with the Middle East doctrine espoused by the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute--a doctrine which held that to create a viable order after the fall of Iraq, regime change in Iran and Syria would have to follow expeditiously.

To sum up this part: the evidence of Mearsheimer and Walt suggests that Israel was never the prime mover of the Iraq war. Rather, once the Cheney-Wolfowitz design was in place, the Israeli ministers who trooped through American opinion pages and news-talk shows did what they could to heat up the war fever. This war was on the cards before they threw in their lot with Cheney and Bush; by their efforts they merely helped to confer on the plan an aura of legitimacy and worldly wisdom.

But now the American war with Iran they originally wanted is coming closer. Last Tuesday, when the mass media were crammed to distraction with the behavior of a senator in an airport washroom, few could be troubled to notice an important speech by President Bush. If Iran is allowed to persist in its present state, the president told the American Legion convention in Reno, it threatens "to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust." He said he had no intention of allowing that; and so he has "authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities." Those words come close to saying not that a war is coming but that it is already here. No lawmaker who reads them can affect the slightest shock at any action the president takes against Iran.

Admittedly, it was a showdown speech, reckless and belligerent, to a soldier audience; but then, this has been just the sort of crowd and message that Cheney and Bush favor when they are about to open a new round of killings. And in a sense, the Senate had given the president his cue when it approved, by a vote of 97-0, the July 11 Lieberman Amendment to Confront Iran. It is hardly an accident that the president and his favorite tame senator concurred in their choice of the word "confront." The pretext for the Lieberman amendment, as for the president's order, was the discovery of caches of weapons alleged to belong to Iran, the capture of Iranian advisers said to be operating against American troops, and the assertion that the most deadly IEDs used against Americans are often traceable to Iranian sources--claims that have been widely treated in the press as possible, but suspect and unverified. Still, the vote was 97-0. If few Americans took notice, the government of Iran surely did.

That unanimous vote was the latest in a series of capitulations that has included the apparent end of resistance by Nancy Pelosi to the next war. After the election of 2006, the speaker of the house declared her intention to enact into law a requirement that this president seek separate authorization for a war against Iran. On the point of doing so, she addressed the AIPAC convention, and was booed for criticizing the escalation of the Iraq war. Pelosi took the hint, shelved her authorization plan, and went with AIPAC against the anti-war base of the Democratic party.

This much, one might know without the help of Mearsheimer and Walt. But without their record, how many would trace the connection between the removal of Philip Zelikow as policy counselor of the state department, at the end of 2006, and a speech Zelikow had given in September 2006 urging serious negotiation and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine? The ousting of Zelikow was a blessing to the war party, since it freed them from a skeptical confidant of Secretary of State Rice--perhaps the only person of stature anywhere near the administration whom she treated as an ally and friend. And the meaning of the change was clear when Zelikow's replacement turned out to be Eliot Cohen: a neoconservative war scholar and enthusiast, an early booster of the "surge" on the pundit shows, and incidentally a shameless slanderer of Mearsheimer-Walt ("Yes, It's Anti-Semitic," Washington Post, April 5, 2006).

From Zelikow to Cohen was only a step on the long path of humiliation that now stretched before Condoleeza Rice. When, in March 2007, amid suggestions of a renewal of diplomacy, she intimated that talks might be helpful in dealing with the Hamas-Fatah unity government (whose formation the Arab world had greeted as offering a promise of peace), she was demolished by an AIPAC-backed advisory letter bearing the signatures of 79 senators, which directed her not to speak with a government that had not yet recognized Israel. From that moment Rice was effectively neutralized.

The hottest cries for another war have been coming this summer from Joe Lieberman. He has called for attacks on Iran, and for attacks on Syria. It is as if Lieberman, with his appetite for multiple theaters of conflict, spoke from the congealed memory of all the wars he never fought. But Joe Lieberman is a stalking-horse. He would not say these things without getting permission from Vice President Cheney, a close and admired friend. Nor would Cheney permit a high-profile lawmaker whom he partly controls to set the United States and Israel on so perilous a course unless he had ascertained its acceptability to Ehud Olmert.

Yet the chief orchestrater of the second neoconservative war of aggression is Elliott Abrams. Convicted for deceptions around Iran-Contra, as Lewis Libby was convicted for deceptions stemming from Iraq--and pardoned by the elder Bush just as Libby had his sentence commuted by the younger--Abrams now presides over the Middle East desk at the National Security Council. All of the wildness of this astonishing functionary and all his reckless love of subversion will be required to pump up the "imminent danger" of Iran. For here, as with Iraq, the danger can only be made to look imminent by manipulation and forgery. On all sober estimates, Iran is several months from mastering the nuclear cycle, and several years from producing a weapon. Whereas Israel for decades has been in possession of a substantial nuclear arsenal.

How mad is Elliott Abrams? If one passage cited by Mearsheimer-Walt is quoted accurately, it would seem to be the duty of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to subject Abrams to as exacting a challenge as the Senate Judiciary Committee brought to Alberto Gonzales. The man at the Middle East desk of the National Security Council wrote in 1997 in his book Faith or Fear: "there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart--except in Israel--from the rest of the population." When he wrote those words, Abrams probably did not expect to serve in another American administration. He certainly did not expect to occupy a position that would require him to weigh the national interest of Israel, the country with which he confessed himself uniquely at one, alongside the national interest of a country in which he felt himself to stand "apart...from the rest of the population." Now that he is calling the shots against Hamas and Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran, his words of 1997 ought to alarm us into reflection.

Among many possible lines of inquiry, the senators might begin by recognizing that the United States has other allies in Asia besides Israel. One of those allies is India; and there is a further point of resemblance. In a distinct exception to our anti-proliferation policy, we have allowed India to develop nuclear weapons; just as, in an earlier such exception, we allowed Israel to do the same. But suppose we read tomorrow a statement by the director of the South Asia desk of the National Security Council which declared: "There can be no doubt that Hindus are to stand apart from any nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Hindu to be apart--except in India--from the rest of the population." Suppose, further, we knew this man still held these beliefs at a time of maximum tension between India and Pakistan; and that he had recently channeled 86 million dollars to regional gangs and militias bent on increasing the tension. Would we not conclude that something in our counsels of state had gone seriously out of joint?

The Mearsheimer-Walt study of American policy deserves to be widely read and discussed. It could not be more timely. If the speeches and saber-rattling by the president, the ambassador to Iraq, and several army officers mean anything, they mean that Cheney and Abrams are preparing to do to Iran what Cheney and Wolfowitz did to Iraq. They are gunning for an incident. They are working against some resistance from the armed forces but none from the opposition party at home. The president has ordered American troops to confront Iran. Sarkozy has fallen into line, Brown and Merkel are silent, and outside the United States only Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency stands between the war party and a prefabricated justification for a war that would extend across a vast subcontinent. Unless some opposition can rouse itself, we are poised to descend with non-partisan compliance into a moral and political disaster that will dwarf anything America has seen.

Comments

[JoePenn]

A mostly excellent piece. But I lean in the opposite direction of how hard Israelis and US Israeli-firsters (like the Senator from Tel Aviv his his 95 or so fellow senators from Tel Aviv and 420 or so congresspersons who represent Tel Aviv) pushed for Iraq to be taken on. I believe there was much more force, and limiting it to “…well, Ok, Iraq and THEN Iran, if that’s how you want the sequence, Dick and Georgie” takes the burden off the neocons, AIPACers, and especially the world’s biggest psycho, netanyahu the yoo-hoo.

The ‘caches of weapons found in Iraq’ came from Iran ---- tripe --- that’s a load of hooey, as fake as the ‘bogint’ (bogus intelligence) we were supposed to have swallowed for Iraq 5 years ago.

Funny read: “Eliot Cohen, a war scholar” ----- what does that mean, that he’s never been to war but thought about it, read some books, and then wrote about it? He’s obviously right up there with the other dimwits who were 100 percent wrong in pushing for the war and how great it would go; the same ones pushing for continuance; and the same idiots pushing for Iran.

While Gen (ret) Anthony Zinni is sidelined; Gen (ret) Shinseki ignored; on and on. And Gen Zinni was ‘released’ when he actually tried to work on peace between Israels and Palestinians. That’s a no-no, just as stated above, with Rice ‘intimating that talks would help.’ That too is a no-no --- talk of peace is the last thing Israeli politicians and the AIPACers and AEI and Brookings Institution and Heritage Foundation, et al, are for. But we’re to believe, since their brethren run the media services USA-wide, that it’s the Palestinians who are against peace talks. How else can Israel claim victim status 24/7/365? Peace talks might throw that out of balance.

Then all this fakitude agaist Adhadinajad’s words, construed and re-construed to fit the scenario, and the public is too stupid to try to figure out what was actually said.

[dadw5boys]

The whole lot of you are forgetting one point. The Saudi's finance 90% of the violence of the Middle East and use the "WHITE SLAVES" of the U.S. MILITARY to protect them.
THE SAUDI'S OPENLY CALL AMERICANS THEIR WHITE SLAVES IN NEW PAPERS AND RADIOS ADDRESSES.
BUT THESE IS NEVER REPORTED IN THE USA.

[Jason357]

I still think Iraq was an excuse for Iran all along, at that Israel has been pushing it since before any of us even knew about it. The US doesn't just do something like that without Israel pushing for it. I keep reading that part about Israel being talked in Iraq. It seems more and more absurd each time I read it. When is the last time anyone can recall Israel being "pushed" into anything, especially by the US? Israel does the pushing, as carefully documented by decades of their actions.

[UNCLEJOE]

I just read an authentic historical account of the justification of the THIRD CRUSADE, not in an American book, but in an Italian language book. But before I give you the bottom line, know that all the Christian Crusades were ostensibly raised to regain possession of Jerusalem for the Pope, but in reality, the French Norman and the English Kings had only one reason for leading the Crusades; to enrich themselves by pillaging the Islamic cities from Iran to Palestine and in the process slaughtering all the men and selling all the Islamic women and children into slavery... that's history.
Now about the Third Crusade:
Salidin finally re-conquered Jerusalem,from the French Norman rulers in March, 1189. Instead of slaughtering all the Christians and Jews living in Jerusalem at the time in retribution for the French Norman atrocities of 1099 when the French had conquered Jerusalem, Saladin protected the conquered from any harm by his well disciplined soldiers and allowed tens of thousands to leave or stay in peace. Maybe that was a thousand years ago, but maybe we Americans have been given a false impression of the Islamic religious character, to justify 'wiping them off the face of the earth'?

Before you start a war, you have to create a fear and hatred of the nation you intend to attack.
Sicilians, which is my ethnic background, have a high percentage of Islamic culture mixed in their Christianity through 400 years of Islamic occupation of Sicily from the 16th Century on. In Sicilian history there are no accounts of Islamic atrocities, absolutely non. I wonder if the Bush build-up to an Iranian attack is just another WMD hoax to once again steal the world's second largest oil reserves using American manpower and American tax payer's money for the nefarious agenda and benefit of the Robber Oil Barons? Indubitably !

[longnow]

I knew about the article and about the authors
for quite awhile now. What is so hard to
believe is that someone is actually writing
about it. That someone actually had the nerve
to say what needs to be said.
The fact that I am shocked to see your article
means that this country is in lockdown and is
ready for war. They have purple haired comedians
and wonderful people like Ralph Nader chomping
at the bit. Maybe nothing will happen but I
have to stair in wonder as these events unfold
and Nancy Pelosi just blinks her eyes.

[kfdan]

"After the election of 2006, the speaker of the house declared her intention to enact into law a requirement that this president seek separate authorization for a war against Iran. On the point of doing so, she addressed the AIPAC convention, and was booed for criticizing the escalation of the Iraq war. Pelosi took the hint, shelved her authorization plan, and went with AIPAC against the anti-war base of the Democratic party."
This action goes to show that America as we have known it is doomed! The end of the Republic as we have known it is over and the new era of the Banana Republic style Junta is on full tilt. Pelosi is a chicken hawk and neo-con disguised as a democrat. She might as well join the Republican party!

[ghostsofamerica]

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=11084


If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran

by Paul Craig Roberts


"...Neocons have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the will of the U.S. government. Insurgency and terrorism cannot prevail against nuclear weapons.

Many U.S. military officers are horrified at what they think would be the worst-ever orchestrated war crime. There are reports of threatened resignations. But Dick Cheney is resolute. He tells Bush that the plan will save him from the ignominy of losing the war and restore his popularity as the president who saved Americans from Iranian nuclear weapons. With the captive American media providing propaganda cover, the neoconservatives believe that their plan can pull their chestnuts out of the fire and rescue them from the failure that their delusion has wrought.

The American electorate decided last November that they must do something about the failed war and gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress. However, the Democrats have decided that it is easier to be complicit in war crimes than to represent the wishes of the electorate and hold a rogue president accountable. If Cheney again prevails, America will supplant the Third Reich as the most reviled country in recorded history."

[halfnhalf]

I hope the Democrats are not counting on sweeping the elections next year. Perhaps it is time to form a "SWEEP'EM OUT" party. All one has to do is vote against every incumbent. (Maybe we could make an exception for those who raise their right hands and swear, "No More Wars...with anybody."

Is that too much? Okay, let's pass a law barring anybody from serving in government who carries dual citizenship. I'd much rather see gays serve in the military than someone with divided loyalty.

[MT3]

Having turned Iraq into Iran, the vulcans want to turn Iran into Iraq. Who wins? Israel

[RickyJ]

Bromwich, Mearsheimer, Walt and just about all the people who have commented here, are obsessed, just like Fox News, by who is for a program or policy, rather than what is the best policy. I would much rather read articles on how to improve the situation in the Middle East rather than ones denouncing the behavior of people who push for adoption of certain policies.

Let's hear some discussion of the proposed solutions:

1. Keep pushing for the Palestinians to accept a two state solution, along the terms suggested by Israel, and hope that the increasing hatred of Israel and the US, in the Muslim world, doesn't lead to a catastrophe before its implementation.

2. Have a one state solution. There are plenty of variants of this: Arab portions of the West Bank go to Jordan, the rest to Israel; all of Israel, West Bank and Gaza as part of one secular state, etc..

3. Move the Jews (and Christians?) of Israel to Texas, Oregon, Alaska (those are the places I've seen suggested in posts on the Internet) and let the Muslims have that sliver of land all to themselves.

Don't laugh. That is the important discussion. Denouncing AIPAC is not going to prevent a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East or terrorists from carrying out successful strikes in America.

[CharliePfromHB]

Amongst this great dialogue, I must pose a few comments and questions.
1. Why would Iran proceed with a nuclear attack on Israel or the USA when it would assure their destruction. Their Jihad zeal is such that their can at least their leadership could die saying "At least we got Israel!"?
2. In the past when Israel perceived an immediate threat, didn't they take pre-emptive action?
3. When will the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim
religions come clean and admit that the common god is OIl? A major apostle of the God OIL is water, which in that region needs major energy to create it (desalination,yes the process by which Saudi Arabia already gets the majority of its fresh water.)
4. Yes, it is true that leaders in all these nations still view war from a WWII perspective..ie. Yes, we can win a war through mass destruction. Clearly, Terrorist groups don't recognize that we are committed, by necessity, to a co-dependent world that has energy (ultimately clean) and fresh water at its centerpoint?
5. It is clear that many Middle Easterners want the USA out of the region. Maybe they're diluted into thinking Isreal couldn't defend itself. Don't they/we realize that we stood on ration lines to persue WWII? We are China's and the Middle East's biggest customer? Did we forget that the "consumer" is king in capitalism, not the supplier?

We are in a state of denial! Yes, manipulated by the lobbyists and combinations in restraint of change known as cartels and oligopoies! But Iran isn't the problem, it's the symptom. Is our Energy indigestion and military industrial complex so out of control that we only know how to solve this cancer through military surgery, radiation, and chemo(ie. oil)-therapy? Sure, seek out terrorists, but how about real change, even willingness to ration resources to achieve victory. That would get the world's (and our) attention. A better direction than putting fire on oil. That's the America that would be the beacon of light on the hill of our future.

[dora rice]

Bush and his neo team made this country vulnerable to the big shark China. Keep fighting losing wars and China will land on our shores with huge belly ships and will accomodate american slaves for China's rice paddies? while they will be sunning themselves in South Miami and Malibu. Is this fiction? Not anymore.

[OmnesOmnibus]

There doesn't seem to be any hope that this disaster can be averted. The Democrats have gone silent on the subject.

[Michmod]

I cannot believe such an insane thing could possibly happen, she thinks, yet again.

[CATO90025]

AIPAC the "Chosen Lobby"--you can not even get a memorial re. USS Liberty the AIPAC stranglehold is so strong.

Mossad agents cheering and filming 9/11 show pre-knowledge. When will the madness end? At least the bell has been rung--Middle America has neo-con and AIPAC in their vernacular.

Hanging the AIPAC spies will be a start!