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

[IranianDude]

Thank you David - well written piece.

Is it me or Americans have short term memory problem?
While Elbaradei praises Tehran for progress in co-operation with IAEA, the inarticulate president of the United States is encouraging military confrontation!

You Americans boast about how democratic your country is and how you enjoy the kind of liberty the world envies ... Tell me David, what happened to the mandate of the democratic party to resist the war criminals in the White House?

It sounds like to me that AIPAC has entered Peolsi in its payroll. After all, Hilary is enjoying the perks why not the hip congresswoman from San Fran?

Respectfully,
IranianDude

[jinjinpinti]

IranianDude: Exactly! Just imagine the horrified chagrin as the ordinary U.S. citizen stands, unbelieving and utterly demoralized, as he witnesses the unprecedented takeover of his country by a seemingly unstoppable administration enabled by those we elected to congress to preserve our demoncracy. The feelings of impotence and powerlessness among us are endemic, and we know not how to effect a reversal. Every ordinary U.S. citizen I know is strongly OPPOSED to an attack on Iran, but has no real voice in the matter.

[jinjinpinti]

IranianDude: You will not find so many Americans boasting about our democracy as in times past. There are many many millions of us who feel utterly betrayed and demoralized at what this current government has wrought in our names. We stand aghast, horrified and seemingly without influence as our "leaders" rush madly headlong into more insanity. We are profoundly disappointed in the Democrats we elected to oppose the sickness, who now ignore us to court political victory.

[politicky]

IranianDude,

*sigh*

Here check this out

http://www.bradblog.com/

it might help you understand why I feel powerless as an American. I vote. I help with campaigns. I feel like a damn hamster on a wheel.

[straightshooter]

Mr. Bromwich

Kudos!!! Thank you. Your commentary, like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book, is right on the money. Our country has fallen into the hands of fools and fascists. We are on a one way road to disaster. If Israel and its US lobby do convince Bush and co to attack Iran, it will be a horror of horrors in a multitude of ways. I am sad to also predict that for what should be obvious reasons, its consequences will lead to a new era of the demonization of Jews around the world, including the US. Would that the powers that be in Washington were of sufficient intelligence, morality and world experience to realize that Israel is indeed our number one geopolitical liability, a millstone around our neck that is leading us to ruin. As predicted by eminent Jewish intellectuals during the early 20th century, it is also a curse for Jews.

[Giordano Bruno]

Can somebody please explain how a President with 29 per cent support, and all kinds of Republican defections plans to orchestrate an attack on Iran. I know he answers to a higher power, but honestly, I don't see how he is going to pull this off. I know he wants to do it, but this is going to take some mighty big whoppers. And nobody believes him anymore.

GB

[Thinkbolt]

This is so horrifying. I can't muster any response other than sheer horror.

[GayGrandpa]

We can bomb Iran and we may not be able to stop this administration from doing so but if we do we will alienate the 50+% of the Iranian public and we will unite a nation and an entire region against us and Israel. Bush knows this, he knows exactly what he is doing...and I have little doubt that it is what he intends...he is acting for his G(g)od. He believes he is an actor hastening the end times but all is doing is making a bigger mess for us to clean up...silly little boys and their fanatical religious egos.

[2FedUp]

Thank you, Mr. Bromwich for a fine article. The Mearsheimer-Walt study of American policy should be required reading for all members of Congress.

Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and Bush are simply insane. There is no doubt in the minds of most that this administration is "reckless and belligerent" and lusting for "a new round of killings". This is the most dangerous, corrupt, and disastrous administration in U.S. history. Authorizing the military to confront Iran is another example of the insanity which ought to be met with fierce resistance. The co-optation and capitulation of Pelosi and Congress to this murderous regime will be viewed historically as shameful and cowardly unless they act courageously to restore and protect what America is supposed to stand for.

[waynesmyer]

Thanks 2FedUp: I too am fed up! The REPUKES are totally psychotic and the Demorats are forming up their famious Circular Firing Squad. There is little hope that John Q and Mary Q will wake up and take note of destruction of our country , nor is there real hope that the situation will improve if the Demorats take office. Cowards all!
Lwayno, Veterans For Peace

[outnow]

What is the moral responsibility when those who have been victims regain power?

Tikkan Olam! The Jews in Israel have become the new Nazis. They are repeating the Holocaust. Christians are no better. In fact with the Christian Zionism more deaths will occur than under Hitler.

Where are the anti-war and civil libertarians in the Jewish community? They have, through Leo Strauss, joined up with the fascists.

[GayGrandpa]

This has been in the hopper for two years and was dated due around September 2007...duh Dbwuah does any one doubt the demonic doings of these devils?

[DV8]

Translation to Ahmadinejad speech
http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/

[midtown]

This is an excellent piece, Mr. Bromwich. Like happytrails notes at 12:34 pm on 09/04/2007, I wonder how long this will stay up at HuffPo.

This deserves to stay up for a week. Everyone needs to read it. This article deserves some serious Digg'ing.

[pakiman]

No surprise, just as you said, this was one of the first articles to be removed from the main page today

[CentredCanuck]

The charge that Mearsheimer and Walt's work is anti-semitic is overblown and unfair. What is not is that it is used for anti-semitic purposes and "proof" that their is a Jewish cabal at work that directs the policy of the United States. It is evident in the comments on this site. The charge that Jews control the money, the media, world governments, etc. has been put forward many (all of whom are anti-semites). Mearsheimer and Walt, has been and will continue to be used by these anti-semites to "prove" the false allegation.

Interestingly, the other charge of the anti-semites has always been dual loyalty, if not to Israel in the last 50 odd years, then to Judaism as a whole, or the imaginary Jewish cabal. Calling Lieberman a traitor, or suggesting that all Jews have dual citizenship is this charge. It too is untrue. Jews having the right to citizenship in Israel, should they so choose, is not the same as dual citizenship or dual loyalty. There exists many hyphenated Americans that have concern if not loyalty to their country of origin. They send money, have lobbying groups and other organizations that operate in the United States.

One can disagree with the policies of Israel. One can disagree with the policies of the United States. One can advocate a position that aligns with Israel or Botswana and be an American. Does this make them a traitor? Surely not. America is a democracy and provides for free speech and lobbying of one's government. It also allows for studies such as Mearsheimer and Walt's. They are NOT anti-semitic nor are their findings. It's how they may be used that should be of concern.

[EspressoAtNoon]

In a Democracy there supposed to exist a "marketplace of ideas" where the best ideas eventually rise to the top.

For too long ONLY one idea has been permitted with regards to the Israel/Palestinian conflict. The "marketplace" supposed to ensure a fair and balance press (i.e. balanced venue) to debate and let the impartial viewer/listener decide whose argument is superior. But in the case of the Israel/Palestine debate the McCarthyist tactics of demonizing one side of the debate as "anti-semite" has largely silenced the debate.

And since the debate has been silenced Israel has helped itself to billions of U.S. taxpayer money (just about all of which we must borrow from China to give to them). We have now let their Zealots mislead us into war with Iraq and now they're intent on running us into war with Iran.

And so Americans are disgusted that trying to expose how our foreign policies are being written and by whom results in untrue and unfair Zionist attacks using that same old "anti-semitic" card.

If American Jews are seriously worried about anti-Semitism, then stand up and be counted. Do what George Soros does. He stands up and exposes AIPAC and puts his money (not into pro-Zionist coffers), but into exposing the neo-con Zionists, because he's an American Jew who truly is as disturbed by all this as much as his non-Jew counterpart.

There are MANY Jews who speak out against these Zionist Ideologues and they are all strategically labelled as "self-hating Jews". These are the ones who will remind Americans that this isn't a Jewish cabal, but a handful of dangerous religious Zealots (both Jewish and Christian) who quickly need a spotlight put on them.

Never before in American history have we needed a more honest and open debate on Israel's "special" relationship with the U.S. And the Dershowitzes, Foxmans, and AIPAC types should no longer be allowed to destroy that dialogue by demonizing thoughtful human beings as "anti-semites".

[CentredCanuck]

The first problem with your comment is that you are turning the word "Zionist" into a bad word. Just as the conservative movement has done to the word "liberal". Zionism is the right of Jews to self-determination and their own state. That is all. I am a Zionist and a liberal. You can be both. Do you think the people in Peace Now, Israeli citizens, don't consider themselves Zionist. They do, and they also believe that the Palestinian people have a right to their own state and self-determination.

While you are correct that the knee-jerk reaction to anything that may be perceived as bad for Israel has certain people throw out the charge of anti-semitism and this stifles debate, it does not mean that all such charges are illegitimate. (I do point out that such charges against Mearsheimer and Walt are those that are unwarranted. One should be fair minded and not assume that all charges of anti-semitism are made just to stifle debate but come from actual concern that such a sentiment exists. Please read many of the posts on this site whenever Israel is mentioned. There is no question that much of it is anti-semitic. What you also see here is people attempting to protect themselves from that charge, when it is true, by putting a disclaimer on what are obviously anti-semitic rants. Such disclaimer usually takes the form of: 1. I can't be anti-semitic because I am a semite or 2. I am going to be called an anti-semite by right-wing fascist neo-con Zionists so if you say what I said is anti-semitic then you must be a right-wing fascist neo-con Zionist. Talk about stifling debate.

[Boobaloo]

Great posts Espresso! Could not have said it better myself.

Have you read any of Mr.Norman Finkelsteins work?

A Jew and a man of peace.

[warwick2005us]

Great piece.

Unfortunately our Congress and Senate are already in the pockets of AIPAC, so there will be no opposition to these plans...

The US is morphing itself into Israel: wars of aggression, use of torture, etc... After we bomb Iran, we will get killed in buses and trains too... and live in fear and deep neurosis, just like the Israelis...

US interests and Israeli interests are NOT the same... but most of us, stupid as we are, still believe we are on the same page on everything...

Israel is not an ally... it is a liability...

[MikeDu]

Remember for a short while after the invasion the U.S. was taking the advise of Israeli 'specialists' and bulldozing the family homes of anyone it found to be in opposition. That policy either went away or went underground and was replaced by wall - I mean 'fence' building over large chunks of the country. It is true that Fallugha ans Sammara are entirely circled by walls/berms?

[MikeDu]

Sounds like a big Neocon circle-jerk. The Neocons support Israel because the Israeli right supports the Neocons because the Neocons support Israel...

Lets face it, most of U.S. foreign policy is done from sheer spite. Castro or Ortega or Hussein or Noriega or whoever either refuses to kowtow to their U.S. corporate masters - or worst is a loyalist who goes off the reservation. The U.S. will devote the next fifty years trying to exact retribution. The Iranian revolution (against the CIA-installed Shah) was a double-whammy, both a strike against big money corporate interests and a bought-and-paid-for regime undone. It doesn't even matter why anymore. Just make up any excuse. Iran must be brought to heel.

[SilverBurlap]

This is true. And time after time we will keep finding that the hawkish of politicians are the ones who have closest connections to corporate interests. Meanwhile, the career professionals who have spent their lives working as agents for the CIA, inspectors for the UN, or ambassadors for our government are kept in the dark. And because they understand that there is a certain complexity to issues in the middle-east, their warnings always fall on deaf ears due to the fact that its nearly impossible to sum up anything important in a 30 second sound byte.

[happytrails]

I'm curious to see how long this stays up on HP. My experience is that anything negative about Israel or anything which points out HRC's connection to AIPAC is either taken off-line very quickly OR not even allowed to appear.

[bethinCary]

AIPAC should be recognized as a terrorist organization.
This plan for war in the Mideast was developed in the 90's Under the Project for the New American Century(PNAC). Most all signatories are AIPAC. Ledeen, Libby, Perle, Kagan, Cohenn....many of the same players from Iran/Contra.
Thier self-importance is laughable.I think AIPAC was always responmsible for the propaganda part of these wars. Since our attempts in the 50s by the CIA-it has and always will be about oil. For some reason the greedy oil robber barons think it is fine to use the American miltary for their own business future.It has and always will be about oil over there. Look at a map-you will notice that Iran is the middles part of securing an area in the Mideast between Afghanistan and Iraq-that would gaurantee the US a foothold over there (to gain access to Russian/caspian oil).
These guys don't have Israels' interest at heart. They are just pretending that they do-to drive the propaganda for more wars in the Mideast.