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

[dapaul]

And what about the new neo-con President of France, Sarkozy, who is lining up with Bush to bomb or invade Iran? Talk about a Zionist takeover of the world.

[jaber]

Well written Mr. Bromwich!
As for the 'The Israel Lobby..' 's book, is already under attack and agents of elites have countered the facts with their spin in books such as 'Dangerous Lies'!
And that's how it's become in this country; money buys the power to distort facts. And what's left is hundred of millions of Americans who seem to have no choice but blindly follow what they've been fed as news if they care to know. Of course we can not forget the majority herd that follow Christian Zionism and awaiting the dooms days. Pity on them, to cause so much catastrophe for rest of the world.

[mommamia526]

Although I am old, I regularly take courses. A few years back I took a few at a community College. Met Muslims there, from a number of different countries. They thought I was Asian. We talked about a number of things. When I said I am jewish, upon being asked, they wanted to know such things as, do jews fast, do you fast? What do you believe. How do you, or do you, imagine God. I have had similar discussions with my doctor, one of my doctors, a Sikh. We are almost always in total agreement, and where we differ, we accept each other's differences, or we learn something new we did not know. These persons live here in the U.S., and they practice their faith. No one wants to drive them out anywhere, or send them back to where they came from, except maybe a few persons in some areas. With those discussions we also agreed that our religions and cultures are ingrained as we have been brought up with them since childhood, and lived those. It makes no sense to change others to accept our ways of belief and our ways of life. The problem in the Middle East, and elsewhere, is that people want to do something that is impossible: keep whole areas pure and free of other influences and populations. And also want to change OTHERS to adapt to them. That is foolish and impossible. Muslims have 22 countries, and large ones. Israel has just one tiny sliver of land. Jews are educated, hard working and business/education oriented. They will bring prosperity to the Middle East, if and when the Middle East lets them, and welcomes them back as their brothers. Trade brings prosperity and work to everyone, so does industry and education. Again, and we have Torah in common, as well as ancestry.

[Hugo de Balsac]

i'm always confused by the idea of Anti-Semitism. are Jewish people the only "semetic" people on Earth? is there a patent on that ethnicity? because, if my hunch is correct and both Palestinians and Lebanese people share this ancestry, then damn near everyone in that region of the world is "anti-semetic".

i think that word description fails to interpret what is going on in the Middle East and is used as a scapegoating tactic by pundits and other self-annoited experts to undermine real dialogue. it's just an outmoded, localized definition that refers to a troubled white/jewish history, not the current state of political unrest.

did someone already post a comment like this? i didn't read every reply.

[QueenCeleste]

Beautifully stated Mr. Bromwich. You are a brilliant and courageous man.

[KittyHegemann]

Good lord people. You quibble over Jehovah and Allah? I don't want Iran to have nukes either, but I don't blame them. We haven't invaded nuclear India or Pakistan have we? I have written and written letters to everybody I can think of to stop this continued insanity. I'm at a point where I just have to let the chips fall where they will. Since our Congress won't stop BushCo, I guess we'll just have to hope Russia, China and everyone else will. And they won't have to fire a shot. They will use economics to destroy the US (what's left of it).

[Georgea]

I remember form my days as a graduate student Professor Bromwich's "Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking," and have been a fan and a student of his thinking ever since.

It is clear from this latest piece that Dr. Bromwich's defense of liberalism as a universal and self-critical set of values worth living by are still operative in these dismal days. I appreciate the argument, furthermore, that anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel are not one and the same, and that the time has come for sensible, old-fashioned notions of right and wrong (right being, er, equality and justice FOR ALL) come back into the mainstream of American politics.

Thank you, Prof. Bromwich.

[darkwaters]

This is an excellent and informative article. I look forward to reading the book to which it refers. Hopefully, I'll be able to do that before the U.S. plunges the world into a catastrophic conflict, and before thousands and perhaps millions of innocents are murdered on behalf of an agenda rational people can only guess at.

That the convicted liar and Machiavellian snake Abrams is carrying Cheney's water on this by inventing its rationale is no surprise.

I only hope that our friends in Israel don't get too carried away with the delusion that this adventure is being undertaken on their behalf. Sadly, as with everything else associated with the Bush/Cheney junta, the ultimate goal is the perpetual destabilization of the Middle East in order to maximize profits for the last 100 viable years of the oil companies, and to ensure a perpetual war supplied by KBR/Halliburton. Israel is, like any patsy, expendable.

[Entheo]

excellent article; thank you.

Stephen Walt was on Fresh Air (NPR) today, followed by the head of the Jewish Anti-Defammation League. Walt's words were measured and fair, and he stressed Israel's right to exist, protect itself, etc., and the right for pro-Israel groups to exist. He then let the facts speak for themselves. Subsequently, as Walt predicted, he was accused of being anti-Semetic by the ADL guy, with the usual tired accusations, bullying and intimidation.

It has become strikingly clear to me over the years that to have an open discussion about our unbalanced support in the Middle East is to be cast into the outer darkness, branded with the new Scarlett Letter. "Manifest Destiny v.2" is underway and let no one try to stop it. The problem is that this time it will fail, just as other meglamaniacal imperial schemes eventually exhaust themselves. I only hope that there's something left of our planet when this Koyannisquatsi ends.

[joekonn]

Israel is a very expensive friend.

[straightshooter]

Indeed. Our "friend" is costing US taxpayers nearly $20 million in aid EACH AND EVERY DAY. There are also other enormous costs much too numerous to detail here. All we get in return is the justified hatred of Arabs and Muslims and worldwide animosity. TALK ABOUT A BAD INVESTMENT!!

[microsrfr]

Iraq and Iran are Bush and Cheney's war, no one else. The mere fact that Israel made public supportive statements just indicates that they know what hand feeds them.

The recent IEA report demonstrates that we will have a tight or short oil supply from here on out. There will be US troops in the Middle East to secure the developed world's oil supply for the foreseeable future.

All Isrealites should ask themselves the question -- Am I more secure now than at the beginning of the Bush Administration? The obvious answer is no.

[avergejoe]

From TimesOnline 07/10/05: Netanyahu warns West it must halt Iran nuclear plans
From BreitBart 07/12/05: Netanyahu hints could consider Iran nuclear strike
From Jerusalem Post 04/23/06: Olmert: Iran nukes threaten Western civilization
From Ynet 12/12/06: Olmert: Iran wants nuclear weapons like Israel

From HumanEvents 01/30/07:
Israel's "Bibi" Netanyahu, who compares Iran's Ahmadinejad to Hitler, said: "The world that didn't stop the Holocaust last time can stop it this time. ... Who will lead the effort against genocide if not us? The world will not stand up on behalf of the Jews if the Jews do not stand up on behalf of the world."
Said former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz: "Iran is the heart of the problem in the Middle East. It is the most urgent threat facing the world, and needs to be dealt with before it's too late." After meeting with the Department of State's Nicholas Burns, Mofaz called 2007 "a year of decision."
Richard Perle assured the conference that Bush will attack Iran rather than see it acquire nuclear weapons capabilities. Newt Gingrich also brought his soothing touch to the proceedings: "(C)itizens who do not wake up every morning and think about possible catastrophic civilian casualties are deluding themselves.

From HumanEvents 03/20/07:
"Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received a smattering of boos when she bad-mouthed the war effort during a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Democratic leadership, responding to concerns from pro-Israel lawmakers, was forced to strip from a military appropriations measure a provision meant to weaken President Bush's ability to respond to threats from Iran."

From The Moderate Voice 06/10/07: Lieberman: Iran Should Be Bombed If It Meddles In Iraq
From Haaretz 06/19/07: Netanyahu departs for U.S. in bid to increase pressure on Iran
From New York Times 06/24/07:
"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,"

[NOMOREWAR FORISRAEL]

More on Mearsheimer and Walt:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=49800

[Steamboater]

Look, Iran is not our friend. They're already launching missles into northern Iraq at the kurds and we've done nothing about it so Bromwich is right; the war with Iran has begun but he fails to see that the Iranians are not innocents abroad in the middle east.
It's not just Bush who has said that IEDs exploding amid our troops are from Iran. This has been verified by troops on the ground and they're not lying. I don't know what the slution is in regard to Iran having nuclear weapons other than face to face negotiation which Bush has refused to do unfortunately, but I don't think the world is safe with a nuclear Iran either. They should be stopped. Maybe more sanctions, and very severe sanctions, if we can get europe to go for it but that might not be possible. If Bush and Cheney are bent on war with Iran the entire middle east will explode but Israel too has a stake in a nuclear Iran. The Israelies are almost on Iran's doorstep and the talk coming out of Teheran has not been neighbor friendly in regard to what Iran may have in store for Israel. The Israelies are frightened and for good reason and have a more justifiable reason to pre-empt an attack on Iran than anyone else.
(As for the way the Israleis treat terrorists (that was Bromwich's word--TERRORISTS) see today's NY Times and the article comparing Israelie treatment of 'terrorists' and our treatment of alledged terrorists. Bromwich is way off the mark.)
To see the Iranians as innocents amid a U.S. and Israeli monster hovering over them is more than naive; it's dumb. Bromwich doesn't weant to see the threat that Iran poses and has posed. War isn't the answer. Talk is but when we have a president with a one-track mind who can't even put a sentence together without notes, the entire world is in trouble.

[MajorKong]

Iran is shelling northern Iraq in response to the Kurdish terrorist group PEJAK operating against Iran.

[ZenJu]

OOOH, Big Bad Israel has nukes! Just imagine that! And I wonder why? Could it be because the Israelis live in an incredibly tiny sliver of a country which used to be only SIX MILES WIDE at its narrowest point from 1949 to 1967 and had a population of around 3 million, surrounded by dozens of Arab/Islamic nations howling for Jewish blood and threatening to burn Tel Aviv to the ground and exterminate the Jews? You anti-Sem..­.'scuse me, is it anti-Zionists this week?--you anti-Israelis always leave that salient point out. Many in the Arab/Islamic world still hate Israel and the Jews and differ only in the method and timing of destroying the still-tiny Jewish nation--the only one on Earth. I do not blame Israel for having its arsenal to give the fanatics and jihadis a moment of pause. You Israel bashers and Streicher-like Jew-baiters at HuffPo have taught me well: Israel's raison d'etre and right to exist are valid still and always, and while you haters talk and salivate, I will work to keep Israel safe.

[IranianDude]

Darlin', anti semtism label was effect for about an hour. Come up with something a tad more coherent, will ya?

[mommamia526]

IranianDude. Please read what ZenJu actually says. Actually, as a jew, I have more in common with Arabs, Asians and their real religions than I have with christians, not with terrorist extremists, though. The problem is that I just do not like to be exterminated and wiped off the face of this earth. There are too many muslims and Arabs for example in The Netherlands, where I am originally from, who actually have or want to kill Dutch people because they have an opinion which they do not approve of, or made a movie. That does not sit well with me, as both an originally Dutch person, and a jew. Freedom of speech, and expression, to be what you are, of religion, and the protection of such freedoms has always been a matter of fact in The Netherlands, for centuries, in fact. Yet, I have yet to hear of any Dutch person who advocates to drive the Arabs, muslims, or others who will change the Dutch to adhere to their own imported values into the North Sea. The incoherent person here, in this issue, is not ZenJu, it is you, IranianDude, unfortunately. I have nothing against Iranians, or Persians either. Met the wife of the former Shah of Iran once, Farah Dibah. Interesting and nice woman. Good architect and pianist too. Sorbonne educated.

[TitaniumAvatar]

Yes, Israel has the right to exist and they developed nukes to deter attacks by other countries.

Using this logic it makes sense for Iran to try to develop nukes to deter attacks by other countries.

[mommamia526]

So, and who has stated that Iran should be wiped off the face of this earth? Or, that the Islamic Entity of Iran should be eliminated? No one.

[MajorKong]

Israel is not the plucky little underdog it was in 1967. They are the dominant military power in the region, bolstered by billions of dollars in US military aid annually.

[straightshooter]

Check out the history of the 1967 war. If you consult leading unbiased historians, you will discover that Israel was the "dominant military power in the region" on June 5/67, the day it attacked Egypt (and thereby Jordan and Syria who each shared mutual defense pacts with Egypt.) In fact, since 1948, Israel has had great military superiority over the Arabs. Needless to say, as Lebanon's courageous and innovative Hezb Allah resistance demonstrated so well in the summer of 2006, Israel's dominance of the region is on the wane. Indeed, with nearly 700,000 Israeli Jews having emigrated in the past decade and Jewish immigration no more than a trickle, Israel itself is on the wane.

[unclesmedley]

Yeah... good luck with that, you level-headed guy, you...

[maddogbitesback]

Sorry about that ZenJu.I hate the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, neoNazis and others of that ilk. I resent religions which consider a child dead if he/she marries someone from another religion. I hate words such as kafir or nigger or goy. I am sorry you think Israel has a right to nuclear weapons. The old testament is a book filled with brutality and some Jews believe it. I don't. I don't believe the Israeli state should have been created, or authorized by a ridiculous fundy Brit who had never been there. Certainly after the war there were alternatives to taking Palestine just as there were before the war. The Moslems have long memories, just like the Jews. If I went back 3500 years I would find all sorts of atrocities done to my ancestors just because they lived where they did or believed what they believed. In fact, I don't have to go very far back to find that. I do not accept anti-Semitism but I sure object to Zionism. Within Israel are the worst bigots. And there are lots outside Israel too. They know they are better because they know god chose them and gave them land. Of course he did punish them when they stepped out of line but still he chose them. Well unfortunately Allah forgot to tell the Moslems that little bit. Who would think he could have left out such an important piece of information

[nyboomer]

The absolutely worst invention of mankind is religion. The second worst is the priestly class. The 3rd worst is allotting communal resources to be provided to the priests.

We shall all die because someone believes he/she is right and the rest of humanity is wrong.

[maddogbitesback]

Nyboom -truer words were never spoken. Pox upon them all.

[CATO90025]

Also there is the issue of Mossad--amdocs etc.

Who is the Israeli mole Wolfowitz or Libby--don't they both have dual citizenships? Feith--the neo-con Goebbels was denied security status for leaking classified info. until Wolfy exerted his considerable pressure.

[mommamia526]

What about dual citizenship? Many people the world over have double or even triple citizenship. Here is one way this can happen: A citizen of one country is working for a company and is sent to another country, where the company also has a branch. He maintains his citizenship, but is a legal resident in the country where he works. That country gives automatic citizenship to those born there, as does, for example, the U.S. The child born then may have dual citizenship IF the country of origin of the parents also considers the child a citizen of the country of its parents. Sometimes a child receives triple citizenship, and this can occur if the parents have different nationalities and have kept those nationalities, combined with the previous scenario. I had a cousin who had triple citizenship that way. She was no threat or security risk to anyone. She was a child with leukemia and died before adulthood.­We really need to stop those idiotic rhetorical questions and that inuendo.

[CATO90025]

Not similarly situated--not in leadership positions involving war and their home country.

Divided loyalty is per se treason