Archive for February, 2010
US Israel Policy got us into Afghanistan
US Israel Policy got us into Afghanistan Part 1
SEE VIDEOS: US Israel Policy got us into Afghanistan
http://bit.ly/IsraelAfghanistan
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US Israel Policy got us into Afghanistan Part 2
http://tinyurl.com/USIsraelPolicyGotusintoAfghan
Entire Riz Khan broadcast can be viewed via following URL:
Riz Khan / Riz Khan – Talking to the Taliban
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnWK-rLtFsU
NYC attempted attack blow back from US AfPak policy
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/04/eveningnews/main6460954.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6469602n&tag=mncol;lst;2
Support for Israel motivated 9/11 Hijackers which led to Afghanistan
http://tinyurl.com/ToAfghanistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=422uTaGxY8o&feature=sub
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q-VGZiEbrs
Interview with Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer
Excellent Press TV interview with Philip Giraldi is airing this week and can be viewed via the ‘Media Player’ link at the bottom of the following URL:
Interview with Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer:
http://www.presstv.com/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510529&id=118743#118743
The War on Terror Is Anti-Conservative
By Philip Giraldi
Civis Romanus Sum (by Philip Giraldi)
Civis Romanus Sum
Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/02/12/civis-romanus-sum/
Posted By Philip Giraldi On February 12, 2010 @ 11:00 pm In Uncategorized | 29 Comments
“I am a Roman citizen” was a proud boast in the first century A.D. It implied the obligations of citizenship but also guaranteed privileges and rights that would be observed and protected by the Roman government. Among those rights was the ability to demand one’s day in court to produce evidence if accused of a crime. No citizen could be tortured and the death penalty was reserved for cases of treason. Some might recall that the Roman citizen Apostle Paul of Tarsus, placed under arrest in Jerusalem, successfully claimed his right to appeal to the Emperor and ask for trial in Rome. He was duly transported to the capital city to be tried.
It was not so long ago that “I am an American citizen” might have had a similar resonance. Embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord fired the shot heard round the world, the start of the first successful revolution staged by a colony against a European monarch. The founders of the United States sealed the victory with a Constitution which was intended to guarantee in perpetuity the rights and freedoms that their fellow Americans had fought and died for. Those freedoms were enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment states that no American can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” And then there is the Sixth Amendment: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State,…and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”
Fast-forward two centuries to find that the United States Congress and a President, now defined by some as a unitary executive, have done much to dismantle the rights and privileges that once defined American citizenship. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 might well be described as one of history’s more spectacular euphemisms employed to gut a constitution. It is better known as the Patriot Act I. Patriot Act I became law six weeks after the fall of the twin towers and was followed by the the Patriot Act II of 2006, the two laws together diminishing constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of association, freedom from illegal search, the right to habeas corpus, prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and freedom from the illegal seizure of private property. The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments in the Bill of Rights have all been discarded or abridged in the rush to make it easier to investigate, torture, and jail both foreigners and American citizens. The also incorporates the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of October 17th, 2001, which permits the freezing of assets and investigation of individuals suspected of being financial supporters of terrorism. “Suspected” is the key word, as there is no oversight or appeal to the process.
The Military Commission Act of 2006 followed the Patriot Acts, creating military tribunals for the trying of “unlawful enemy combatants,” including American citizens. Unlike a civil or criminal court, the accused needs only a two-thirds vote by the commission members to be convicted. The act permits the indefinite jailing of suspects in a military prison without providing access to a lawyer or charging with a crime. The government is not required to produce any normally admissible evidence at a commission hearing and can rely on hearsay or even on information obtained overseas during torture to make its case. Detainees do not have access to any classified information being used against them and cannot cross examine or even know the identity of witnesses. The MCA suspends habeas corpus for anyone charged and forbids the application of the Geneva Conventions to mitigate conditions of confinement or to challenge the judicial process or verdict. The Geneva Conventions also cannot be invoked if the accused subsequently claims he was tortured or otherwise abused, protecting overly zealous interrogators from later charges of “war crimes.” The act was also designed to cover all cases that were pending, meaning that it was retroactive.
Those concerned about civil liberties could have predicted that worse might be coming and it has, it seems, finally arrived. On February 3rd Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told members of the House Intelligence Committee that the United States government can kill American citizens overseas who are “taking action that threatens Americans.” Blair reportedly was revealing a secret policy that has been in place since the Bush Administration. It is the ultimate irony that Blair is representing the new Administration in Washington headed by President Barack Obama, who had, during his campaign, opposed the infringements on liberties inherent in the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts. Instead of confining those Acts to the dustbin, Obama has continued them and has also strengthened his Administration’s ability to use the state secrets privilege to silence criticism and dissent.
Blair’s remarks ought to mortify every American citizen but instead have attracted very little critical commentary. They should be examined in some detail. He told the congressmen that the intelligence agencies and Department of Defense would “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed.” That, in all probability, means that if actionable intelligence indicating that an American citizen who is suspected of ties to a sanctioned group is developed a US government lawyer and senior bureaucrat can get together and decide that he should be killed. As the criteria for that decision are secret there is no way to know if there is any kind of rational due process involved.
There are reported to be three American citizens who are on the current hit list, including US-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been connected to the US Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan, responsible for the November 2009 Fort Hood Texas shooting incident, and also to Christmas underwear bomber Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Al-Aulaqi denies any connection to any terrorist conspiracy and the evidence that he or any other individual is actually planning to kill fellow Americans is subject to the usual problem, i.e. that intelligence can be and frequently is wrong or inadequate while divining the intentions of any individual is most often sheer speculation. It all comes down to an official deciding that someone is a terrorist without the government having to prove its case with the penalty for the unfortunate suspect being death.
Blair then went on to explain in more detail, saying “We’re not careless about endangering American lives as we try to carry out the policies to protect most of the country” adding “We don’t target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans.” A question from Representative Peter Hoekstra revealed the mindset behind the policy in asking what to “do when it comes to Americans who have joined the enemy.” Blair responded that the intelligence community will take “direct action” against terrorist citizens when “that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans.”
It doesn’t take a genius to see the flaws in the policy, beyond the semantic problems with an assassination program that protects “most of the country” and presumably leaves everyone else vulnerable. Few would dispute the US government’s right to kill someone who is acting in flagrante, either planting a bomb or participating with a group of armed insurgents to kill American soldiers or civilians. But that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about a US citizen who is living overseas being accused of a capital crime based on secret evidence and being assassinated under orders of the President of the United States. He is not necessarily killed while engaged in an act that directly threatens American citizens but rather can be assassinated when he is asleep with his family, traveling in a car with associates, or having dinner in a restaurant. Anyone unfortunate enough to be near him will quite likely also die. And the suspect has no appeal in the process and no ability to have his day in court to demonstrate that the evidence against him might be wrong.
Anyone who has followed the intelligence narratives linked to the so-called global war on terror now-called overseas contingency operations realizes that intelligence is often flawed or deliberately faked. Most of those arrested on terrorism charges in the US are never charged as terrorists. Overseas, note how many civilians have been killed by drone strikes in AfPak. By one estimate in the Pakistani media, 700 civilians have been killed in Pakistan by drones in attacks that have killed only five militants while the Brookings Institute believes the ratio is more like ten to one. So to my mind, Anwar al-Awlaki and the others on the government hit list are innocent until proven guilty and all are entitled to their day in court, the same rights that I would like to enjoy if I were accused of a crime.
Blair also opens the door wide to extending the practice of killing Americans. He says that the US government can target anyone “involved” with a group that threatens to attack American targets. Well, involvement can mean anything from contributing to a charity that is tied to an organization that the US calls terrorist to sending a letter to the local newspaper defending a group’s actions. Where does it stop? And Blair’s claim that the US government is not interested in targeting free speech is essentially hollow because his own elastic definition of his authority permits him pretty much to go wherever he wants to when it comes to killing whomever he presumes to be a terrorist.
Obama’s decision to assassinate Americans overseas without any due process might well be viewed as an inevitable development from the established practice of killing foreigners using hellfire missiles fired from unmanned drones in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The United States has not declared war on any of those countries yet it reserves to itself the right to attack and kill local residents based on information that it does not subsequently have to reveal. This process is given a legal fig leaf by the US assertion that anyone connected to a terrorist group can be killed anywhere in the world and at any time. It assumes that in such matters the United States has extraterritorial jurisdiction, a claim that no other nation makes and which might reasonably be contested by those on the receiving end. It also does not require the President of the United States to prove his case that someone actually was a terrorist.
The role of the Washington as the Lord High Executioner for the world is tough to reconcile with the high idealism of the Founders as expressed in the Bill of Rights. It also begs the question of where it might go from here. Now that the government is not being challenged in its belief that it can assassinate American citizens anywhere overseas it is perhaps not too much to suggest that killing Americans at home will also become more acceptable to a public that has been properly prepped through fear of terrorism. Indeed, some might argue that Waco and Ruby Ridge demonstrate that that process is already far advanced. Dennis Blair’s comments should serve as a wakeup call for all Americans who care about their liberties, but it is possibly too late. The tepid reaction in the media and from congress reveals that just another few deaths, even if they are American citizens, really don’t matter very much anymore.
Read more by Philip Giraldi
Onward Christian Soldiers, Again – February 3rd, 2010
Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style – January 27th, 2010
The Terrorism Conundrum – January 20th, 2010
The Empire Discovers Yemen – January 13th, 2010
Where’s the Beef, Mr. Murdoch? – January 6th, 2010
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U.S Army Chief: “Iran attack option on the table
U.S Army Chief: “Iran attack option on the table”
http://www.defpro.org/news/details/13160/
I think Admiral Mullen needs to read George Washington’s ‘Farewell Address’ after reading his Tweet below via his ‘TheJointStaff’ Twitter account:
George Washington, A Passionate Attachment, and Israel:
http://tinyurl.com/passionateattachmentandisrael
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@TheJointStaff Arrived in #Israel today for meetings with military ldrs. Committed to this relationship & to Israel’s security. http://flic.kr/p/7D4btq
AIPAC lackey Hillary Clinton still pushing sanctions against Iran for Israel
AIPAC lackey Hillary Clinton still pushing sanctions against Iran for Israel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8517308.stm
Saudi FM al-Faisal doubts Iran sanctions plans
Saudi doubts over Iran sanctions
Imposing more sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme would not be a quick enough solution, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said.
Prince Saud al-Faisal said the threat posed by Iran demanded a “more immediate solution” than sanctions.
He spoke in Riyadh alongside US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who earlier said Iran was “becoming a military dictatorship”.
On Tuesday Turkey’s foreign minister is due in Iran aiming to mediate.
Turkey is a Nato member, and Ahmet Davutoglu is expected to try and promote a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme between Turkey’s western allies and Iran’s Islamic government.
More sanctions?
Speaking at a joint Riyadh news conference with Mrs Clinton, Prince Saud said: “Sanctions are a long-term solution. They may work, we can’t judge.
“ We don’t want to be engaging while they are building their bomb ”
Hillary Clinton US Secretary of State
“But we see the issue in the shorter term maybe because we are closer to the threat… So we need an immediate resolution rather than a gradual resolution.”
While the Saudi minister did not detail his vision of a quick solution in public, it is likely that options were discussed behind closed doors in the meeting between Mrs Clinton and King Abdullah, says the BBC’s Kim Ghattas, who is travelling with the top US diplomat.
Earlier, aides to Mrs Clinton – who is on a tour of the Gulf to try to build support for more sanctions on Iran – revealed she would press Saudi Arabia to help persuade China to support a tougher stand against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
China, which can wield a veto on the UN Security Council as a permanent member, is against imposing more sanctions.
Beijing fears a major loss of revenue from investments in Iran, and disruption of oil supplies from a country providing it with 400,000 barrels a day, our correspondent says.
The Saudi foreign minister said that China, also a top importer of Saudi oil, did not need to be prodded by the kingdom to know what it ought to do about sanctions against Iran.
He added that efforts to rid the Middle East of nuclear weapons must also apply to Israel.
‘Dictatorship’
Speaking to students at a Qatar university earlier on Monday, she said Iran’s elite army corps, the Revolutionary Guard, had gained so much power they had effectively supplanted the government.
“We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship. That is our view,” Mrs Clinton said on her maiden visit to the kingdom.
On Sunday, she urged Iran to reconsider its “dangerous policy decisions”.
Mrs Clinton told a conference in Qatar it was leaving the international community little choice but to impose further sanctions.
The US and its allies fear Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.
Turkish mediation
Turkey has already offered to store Iran’s nuclear material as part of a swap arrangement agreed last year.
Under terms of that deal, Iran would get medical isotopes from France in return for handing over its own enriched uranium.
Turkey’s government hopes its offer to act as a nuclear repository will appeal more to Iran than storing its uranium elsewhere, says the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Istanbul.
But Iran is still insisting that any nuclear swap must take place on its own soil.
If no deal can be done with Iran, Turkey will soon be forced to choose its historically strong alliance with the US and Europe, and its desire for closer friendship with its eastern neighbour, our correspondent adds.
Iran, meanwhile, rejected criticism from the West about its human rights record.
“Iran is becoming one of the predominant democratic states in the region,” said Javad Larijani, secretary general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-clinton-iran16-2010feb16,0,1406253.story
Iran moving toward military dictatorship, Clinton says
The secretary of State, speaking in Qatar, says sanctions against the Islamic Republic must be aimed at the Revolutionary Guard, which she warns is supplanting the government.
By Borzou Daragahi
February 16, 2010
Reporting from Beirut
Bluntly warning that Iran is sliding into military dictatorship, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience in Qatar on Monday that economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic should be increasingly aimed at its elite Revolutionary Guard.
Clinton, who was in Doha, the capital, for a conference on relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world, appeared to suggest that such a strategy could help rein in the ideologically motivated branch of the Iranian military by widening rifts within Iran’s domestic political establishment.”We are planning to try to bring the world community together in applying pressure to Iran through sanctions adopted by the United Nations that will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is, in effect, supplanting the government of Iran,” she said during a visit with students at Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Qatar, according to news agencies
“We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship,” she said.
The Revolutionary Guard was created after Islamic clerics toppled the U.S.-backed monarch and took control of Iran during a 1979 revolution. Since that time, Iran’s government has been a blend of an authoritarian theocracy and a republic.
In recent years, though, members of the Guard have risen to positions of political and economic power, and have been accused by Iranian opposition figures of staging an electoral “coup d’etat” last year. If the Revolutionary Guard is taking control, it could require a different — and perhaps more drastic — response from Washington.
Clinton’s analysis of Iran’s political dynamics, which jibes with the latest assessments by Washington think tanks, suggests a U.S. attempt to use economic pressure to widen the divisions between hard-liners in the Guard and the rest of the Iranian political establishment, as well as with the opposition.
“The idea is to apply pressure on the Revolutionary Guard in order to force a wedge between the opposition movement and the guards, and to affect the guards’ decision-making on the nuclear program,” said Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corp. “It might be an encouragement of the opposition movement in Iran, which also faces Revolutionary Guard repression.”
Even within the Guard, there are differences of opinion and priority. “There are some who are concerned about the economy and making money,” Nader said. “Sanctions might apply enough pressure on the guards to realize that the nuclear program is very costly.”
George Perkovitch, a proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that some in the Guard might see the nuclear program as key to their own control of the government.
“This would be a big change, with a lot of implications that people will need time to think about,” he said. “There’s nothing good about it.”
An Iranian official dismissed America’s threat of further sanctions, saying that even if they were applied they would only help make Iran more self-sufficient.
“The international economic embargo that they always waved as a threat and applied against us is a failing policy,” Abolfazl Zohrevand, an advisor to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Iran’s state-owned Arabic-language Al Alam news channel. “This threat might cause some complications, but we may also welcome it because it is a reason for our remarkable scientific progress.”
Iran has so far counted on Russia and China, which have U.N. Security Council veto power as well as strong economic and political ties to Tehran, to prevent the harshest sanctions advocated by the West from gaining the clout of international law.
U.S. government officials have imposed their own sanctions on individuals and organizations connected to the Guard, and are trying to enlist U.N. allies to add more levels of punishments. Clinton’s comments signal a move by the Obama administration to mobilize its allies as well as the Iranian opposition.
Clinton, in her visit to Doha, just across the Persian Gulf from Iran’s southern coast, acknowledged in a talk Sunday that relations had yet to improve between the U.S. and the Islamic world since President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last year. On Monday, she addressed the widespread view that prospects for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians had dimmed, saying she was hopeful of a breakthrough.
But most of her attention during the visit was focused on Iran and its nuclear activities, which Tehran insists are focused solely on civilian purposes.
Though Clinton denied that the U.S. plans military action against Iran, she raised concerns about whether Tehran intends to build a nuclear bomb.
“The evidence is accumulating that that’s exactly what they are trying to do,” she said Sunday. She did not offer specifics.
After negotiations stalled between the West and Tehran over a possible deal to convert some of Iran’s nuclear material into fuel plates for a medical reactor, Iranian officials upped the ante last week by announcing they would produce their own, more-purified nuclear fuel in a step that would edge them closer to weapons-grade uranium.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in 2007 that Iran had ended work on a nuclear bomb by late 2003. But an upcoming U.S. National Intelligence Estimate might alter that assessment.
Clinton’s comments were broadcast on television from Qatar, which maintains robust diplomatic and economic ties with Iran.
“Iran has consistently failed to live up to its responsibilities,” she said Sunday. “It has refused to demonstrate to the international community that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.”
U.S. State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley told Qatar’s Al Jazeera television that Iran’s actions fed Washington’s suspicions.
“Given the current trajectory that Iran is on — the fact that it still has centrifuges spinning and the fact that it is unwilling to constructively engage the international community — we have to assume that Iran is pursuing a nuclear program,” he told Al Jazeera.
After Tehran announced it would increase enrichment levels, U.S. officials and Western experts said Iran might be bluffing and that it lacked the technical prowess to efficiently produce the higher-grade uranium. A new International Atomic Energy Agency report detailing the latest technical and regulatory aspects of Iran’s nuclear program is due out this week.
Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, asserted Monday that it was within both Iran’s rights and know-how to produce higher-grade uranium. “We are authorized to enrich uranium up to 100% because we are a member of the IAEA. However, we respect our obligations. Those who cannot believe our ability to produce nuclear fuel will see its proof in the IAEA reports later.”
daragahi@latimes.com
Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.
Published: 2010/02/16 01:37:17 GMT
Israel Lobby Still Pushing Hard for Confrontation with Iran
The Israel Lobby (of which The Israel Project is a part) is still pushing hard for confrontation with Iran no matter how many Americans may have to die/get horribly wounded as a result of such (such confirms the Mearsheimer/Walt book yet again):
From: The Israel Project [mailto:press@theisraelproject.org]
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 3:41 PM
Subject: Top U.S. Officials in Middle East to Lay Groundwork for Stronger Action on Iran
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Feb. 15, 2010
Contact:
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi: 202-857-6644 (office), 202-365-0787 (cell), jenniferm@theisraelproject.org
Jennifer Packer: 202-207-6122 (office), jenniferp@theisraelproject.org
www.theisraelproject.org
Subscribe to The Israel Project’s RSS Feed
Top U.S. Officials in Middle East to Lay Groundwork for Stronger Action on Iran
Biden Expected in Israel Next Week for First Official Visit
Experts for comment
Iran Press Kit
The United States’ military chief, secretary of state and other high-ranking officials are touring key Middle East nations starting this week as part of an effort by the Obama administration to build support for its increasingly assertive stance against Iran’s nuclear program.[1]
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen arrived in Jordan Monday (Feb. 15) after holding talks earlier in the day in Israel with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and on Sunday (Feb. 14) with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.[2] At a press conference there, Mullen emphasized his determination to peacefully prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.[3] Mullen began his five-nation tour on Sunday in Cairo where he met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He will also travel to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.[4]
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is traveling in the Persian Gulf to advance the United States’ Iran policy with regional partners.[5] Clinton arrived in Saudi Arabia Monday,[6] where she is scheduled to meet with Saudi King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.[7] On Sunday, Clinton was in Doha, Qatar where she spoke at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum and met with Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani.[8]
Under Secretary of State William Burns is also expected in the Middle East this week, traveling to Lebanon on Feb. 16 and Syria on Feb. 17 for talks with both nations’ leaders.[9] Lebanon sits on the Security Council and could block sanctions if influenced by its neighbor Syria, a key Iranian ally.[10] Also, Vice President Joe Biden is expected in Israel next week for his first official visit, although the trip is still unannounced.[11] Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg also plans to travel to Israel on Feb. 21 for high-level discussions about Iran.[12]
During her discussions with Saudi King Abdullah, Clinton reportedly hopes to gain a commitment that the kingdom will provide China with needed oil if China supports a fourth round of sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council.[13] China, a permanent member of the Council, has continued to oppose U.S. efforts to secure tougher sanctions.[14]
Clinton, speaking Sunday night at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum questioned Iran’s continued defiance. “What does Iran have to hide? Why is Iran refusing to live up to its international obligations, which would lead to political and economic integration with the international community that would actually benefit the Iranian people? Iran leaves the international community little choice but to impose greater costs for its provocative steps.”[15]
An indication of the White House’s growing seriousness about sanctions came last week when Under Secretary of Treasury Stuart Levey announced the United States was imposing financial sanctions on an engineering firm affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, designated by the U.S. as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction,[16] as well as a supporter of multiple terrorist groups.[17]
Secretary Clinton’s Speech at U.S.-Islamic World Forum
Remarks by Secretary Clinton and Qatari Minister Al Thani
Experts available for comment (United States and Israel)
In the United States:
David Albright, President, Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)
Tel: 202-547-3633; E-mail: albright@isis-online.org
Ilan Berman, Vice President for Policy, American Foreign Policy Council;
author, “Tehran Rising: Iran’s Challenge to the United States” (2005);
Tel: 202-543-1006 (office); http://www.afpc.org/berman.shtml
Debra Burlingame, Sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, III, pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11; Co-founder, 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America; Director, World Trade Center Memorial Foundation; Tel: 914-844-3146; E-mail: db@911familiesforamerica.org
Patrick Clawson, Ph.D., Deputy Director for Research,
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy;
Tel: 202-452-0650 ext. 220 (office), 202-302-1722 (cell);
E-mail: pclawson@washingtoninstitute.org;
Web site: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC10.php?CID=10
Frank Gaffney, President, The Center for Security Policy and Founder, DivestTerror.org;
E-mail: gaffney@centerforsecuritypolicy.org;
Web site: www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org
Andrew Grotto, Senior National Security Analyst, Center for American Progress; Tel: 202-682-1611 (office);
E-mail: agrotto@americanprogress.org
Larry Haas, Visiting Senior Fellow, Georgetown Public Policy Institute;
Tel: 202-257-9592 (cell); www.larryhaasonline.com
Sam Kermanian, Secretary General, Iranian American Jewish Federation;
Tel: 310-854-1199 (office, direct); E-mail: skermanian@tradeattache.com
Orde Kittrie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University; former U.S. State Department attorney specializing in nuclear nonproliferation and sanctions;
Tel: 480-727-8572 (office); E-mail: orde.kittrie@asu.edu
Dr. Michael Ledeen, Freedom Scholar, Foundation for Defense of Democracies;
Contact through Judy Mayka, Tel: 202-621-3948; E-mail: Judy@defenddemocracy.org
Valerie Lincy, Editor, Iranwatch.org;
Tel: 202-223-8299 (office); E-mail: valerie@wisconsinproject.org; http://www.iranwatch.org/
Claire Lopez, Consultant and Former Executive Director, Iran Policy Committee;
Tel: 703-583-9573 (office); E-mail: clairelopez@gmail.com
Cliff May, President and Executive Director, The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies;
Contact through Judy Mayka, Tel: 202-621-3948; E-mail: Judy@defenddemocracy.org
Lily Mazahery, President, Legal Rights Institute
Tel: 202-834-7150; E-mail: lmazahery@gmail.com
Gary Milhollin, Executive Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control;
Tel: 202-223-8299 (office); E-mail: info@wisconsinproject.org
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, Founder and President, The Israel Project;
Tel: 202-857-6644 (office); www.theisraelproject.org
Michael Rubin, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute;
Tel: 202-862-5851 (office); Fax: 202-862-4877; E-mail: mrubin@aei.org
Rick Santorum, Former U.S. Senator (R-Penn.), Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Contact Virginia Davis, Cell: 215-528-9368; Home office: 610-658-9658;
E-mail: virginiad@ricksantorum.com, virginiadavis05@gmail.com
U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., Chairman, International Terrorism, Non-Proliferation & Trade Committee;
Tel: 202-225-5911 (office); www.house.gov/sherman/about
Ken Timmerman, President, Middle East Data Project, Inc.;
Author, “Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran” (2005);
Tel: 301-946-2918 (office); E-mail: timmerman.road@verizon.net; www.KenTimmerman.com
Peter Zimmerman, Professor Emeritus, King’s College, London
Tel: 703-966-6680; peter.zimmerman@cox.net
In Israel:
Amb. Jeremy Issacharoff, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of National Security Studies;
Tel: 011-972-3- 640-0400 ext 463 (work); Tel: 011-972-50-620-3887 (cell); E-mail: jeremyi@inss.org.il
Professor Ze’ev Maghen, Lecturer in the History of the Middle East, The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University;
Tel: 011-972-3-531-7812 (office); 011-972-52-383-4069 (cell); E-mail: maghenz@netvision.net.il;
http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa
David Menashri, Chair of Modern Iranian Studies, Tel Aviv University;
Tel: 011-972-3-640-8911 or 011-972-3-640-6161 (office); 011-972-8-940-1467 (home);
E-mail: menashri@post.tau.ac.il
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Footnotes:
[1] Youssef, Nancy A., “U.S. begins Mideast push for ideas on Iranian solution,” The Miami Herald, Feb. 14, 2010, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/AP/story/1480309.html
[2] Ferziger, Jonathan, “Barak Tells Mullen Israel, U.S. Can Patch Differences (Update1),” BusinessWeek, Feb. 15, 2010, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-15/barak-tells-mullen-israel-u-s-can-patch-differences-update1-.html
[3] Lecker, Maya, “Mullen: Attack on Iran could have ‘unintended consequences,’” The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 14, 2010, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3849059,00.html
[4] Youssef, Nancy A., “U.S. begins Mideast push for ideas on Iranian solution,” The Miami Herald, Feb. 14, 2010, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/AP/story/1480309.html
[5] “Clinton warns Iran not to ‘build their bomb,’” BBC News, Feb. 14, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8514772.stm
[6] Kessler, Glenn, “Clinton expected to seek Saudi Arabia’s help in confronting Iran,” The Washington Post, Feb. 15, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/15/AR2010021501038.html
[7] “Clinton warns Iran not to ‘build their bomb,’” BBC News, Feb. 14, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8514772.stm
[8] Landler, Mark, “Clinton Pleads for Patience at U.S.-Islamic World Forum,” The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/world/middleeast/15diplo.html
[9] “Under Secretary Burns Travel to Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Azerbaijan,” U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesman, Feb. 12, 2010, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/02/136650.htm
[10] “Clinton warns Iran not to ‘build their bomb,’” BBC News, Feb. 14, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8514772.stm
[11] Benhorin, Yitzhak, “US Vice President Biden to visit Israel,” YnetNews, Feb. 15, 2010, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3849143,00.html
[12] Landler, Mark, “U.S. Envoys Head Out on a Mission to Rally Iran’s Neighbors,” The New York Times, Feb. 12, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/middleeast/13diplo.html
[13] Kessler, Glenn, “Clinton expected to seek Saudi Arabia’s help in confronting Iran,” The Washington Post, Feb. 15, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/15/AR2010021501038.html
[14] Morris, Harvey, “China move threatens to delay tougher Iran sanctions,” The Financial Times, Jan. 18, 2010, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d2eac63e-03d1-11df-a601-00144feabdc0.html
[15] “Secretary Clinton’s Speech at U.S.-Islamic World Forum,” America.gov, Feb. 14, 2010, http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2010/February/20100215084929ptellivremos0.9392163.html?CP.rss=true
[16] Rozen, Laura, “U.S. announces sanctions on Iran-linked firm,” Politico, Feb. 11, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32811.html
[17] “Background Note: Iran,” U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, September 2009, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5314.htm
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George Washington, A Passionate Attachment, and Israel
George Washington, A Passionate Attachment, and Israel
Monday, February 15, 2010 6:14 PM
From: “Stephen Sniegoski”
To: “Sniegoski, Stephen”
Friends,
Monday, February 15, was celebrated by the US federal government as George Washington’s Birthday this year. (The federal holiday is officially the third Monday of February, though Washington’s actual birthday is February 22. It should be pointed out that the mainstream media and advertisers like to call this day “Presidents’ Day” and a small number of states do officially use that designation.) The holiday is usually accompanied with a celebration of Washington’s life and achievements as leader of the Continental Army and the first President of the United States (under the Constitution), but one thing that is usually ignored in any public discussion is his “Farewell Address” of 1796, especially the part where he discusses the serious danger to the United States from Americans with a “passionate attachment” to a foreign country and advises his countrymen that “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence . . . the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. . . . Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.” The relevance of Washington’s words to the role of a particular foreign country today is all too apparent, and is clearly spelled out in the book, “The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement With Israel, 1947 to Present,” co-authored by the late George Ball, who served as Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, and his son, Douglas B Ball. And the years since the book’s publication in 1992 have seen Israel’s influence over US policy increase geometrically.
Washington’s “Farewell Address” was his political testament to the nation as he prepared to leave the presidency at the end of his second term. Washington never delivered the address in public and it was originally published in the Philadelphia Daily American Advertiser on September 19, 1796 and then reprinted in papers around the country. It very quickly gained great popularity and for more than a century held a place in the pantheon of sacrosanct American documents.
Although the address also dealt with domestic issues, the section on international relations was more significant in actually providing a standard for American policy. During the time of Washington’s presidency, the “passionate attachment” of many idealistic Americans was to the new revolutionary republic of France, which was at war with England and other European monarchies. Not only did idealistic Americans feel an ideological affinity for a fellow republic involved in a life-or-death struggle with monarchical regimes, but many Americans held that a debt of gratitude was owed to France because of its military support during the American Revolution and that the United States was still obligated to abide by the 1778 alliance with France which did not include an end date. Washington, however, astutely held that in foreign policy the United States should pursue its own interests and not be involved in another country’s conflicts, which could only bring on unnecessary problems.
Undoubtedly, the conservative Washington eschewed the radical direction that the French revolution had taken (though in his public statements he remained supportive of republicanism per se in France) , but he expressed his opposition to supporting France in terms of the concrete interests of the United States and not the domestic practices of the French Republic. Consequently, Washington’s Farewell Address applied this principle to American foreign policy in general, not just in situations where an unappealing regime was involved. During Washington’s time, this position could be used to apply also to support for Britain, which was desired by some high Federalists. As Washington wrote: “So likewise a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification.”
Washington certainly faced some serious problems in this area, especially in the case of the Genêt Affair. Edward-Charles Genêt (referred to as Citizen Genet in the egalitarian revolutionary lexicon of the French Revolution) was a brilliant linguist and ardent republican, who was made the French Minister to the United States by the Girondins when they ran the revolutionary government. Genêt arrived in Charleston, South Carolina in early April 1793 and instead of traveling to the temporary US capital in Philadelphia to present himself to President George Washington for accreditation, the colorful Genêt tarried in South Carolina where he harangued crowds with radical republican ideals and raised soldiers and privateers for service against France’s enemies—England and Spain. When Genêt finally left for Philadelphia, he stopped along the way to continue these same activities while being feted by adoring crowds.
Genêt’s activities obviously endangered American neutrality in the war between France and Britain, which Washington had pointedly declared in his Neutrality Proclamation of April 22, 1793. When Genêt met with Washington, he asked for what amounted to a termination of American neutrality and after being turned down, he defied the United States government by continuing to promote military activities against France’s enemies. But while he was able to cause some radical Americans to attack “old man Washington,” as Genet came to call him, his appeal to Americans waned since most Americans identified more with their president than with French republican ideas, and when the more radical Jacobins overthrew the Girondins in June 1793, Genêt fell from favor at home, too. Ultimately, Genêt would have to beg asylum from Washington so as to not be sent back to France to be tried and likely guillotined. A non-vindictive Washington would grant his request, and a chastened Genêt would marry and live out his life in the United States as an American citizen.
The similarity of Genêt to some Israel luminaries has not been missed. In March 2003, Patrick J. Buchanan wrote in his mastery article “Whose War?” that immediately after the 9/11 terrorism, “‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister of Israel, like some latter-day Citizen Genet, was ubiquitous on American television, calling for us to crush the ‘Empire of Terror.’ The ‘Empire,’ it turns out, consisted of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and ‘the Palestinian enclave.’ Nasty as some of these regimes and groups might be, what had they done to the United States?” Of course, the obvious answer to Buchanan’s rhetorical question was “nothing,” but they were all obvious enemies of Israel. Fortunately, for “Bibi” the political climate was much more favorable for this approach than it had been for the hapless Citizen Genêt in the 1790s.
Obviously, with Israel “passionate attachment” has reached a level that Citizen Genêt could never have dreamed of. For now it has become politically necessary for the United States to fully and unconditionally support a foreign country. And there is almost absolute agreement among all America’s political leaders, with deviation simply verboten.
And support for Israel since the beginning of the Bush administration has involved war and the threat of war by the US against Israel’s adversaries with the invasion of Iraq and now the belligerent stance toward Iran. While Israel was in the background as a reason for war against Iraq, it is front and center in the move toward war on Iran. And the dangers used to justify an attack on that country more often than not pertain to Israel, not the United States. Thus concern about Iran’s aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, threats to eliminate Zionism or even to “wipe” Israel off the map, and a possible nuclear weapons program do not really involve sufficiently serious threats to the security of the United States to justify an actual Middle East war.
As the United States pursues a war policy on behalf of Israel’s interests, no one is allowed to point out this obvious fact, even though many of the ardent champions of this policy are closely connected to Israel. These people are instead regarded as American patriots and followed by the gentile super patriot masses who listen to Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Even the critics of the war hawks do not really differ in their assessment when they have described neocon Israel Firsters such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and Norman Podhoretz as overwrought American nationalists. The prescient Washington foresaw this inversion of truth when he wrote: “Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.” And the real American patriots who oppose the wars in the Middle East are often condemned as traitors and defeatists, as neocon David Frum, the author of the Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech, characterized them in his article “Unpatriotic Conservatives: A war against America,” which appeared in the April 7, 2003 issue of the National Review, once the bastion of American conservative nationalism in the United States. (Born and raised in Canada, Frum was not even an American citizen when he wrote this article.)
Washington, sufficiently wise and modest, and not given to the utopian optimism in regard to the United States, acknowledged that his warning would not “prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.” But Washington hoped that his words might “be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”
So while it would be wise for Americans to heed Washington’s warning today, it unfortunately appears that the American polity has fallen too far for Washington’s words to have any effect. And most likely, Washington’s words on the issue of international relations are no longer even known to any but a few specialists on American history and foreign policy, and the United States will likely run “the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations,” namely deterioration and destruction, which cannot be but hastened by its involvement in unnecessary wars.
Transparent Cabal Website:
http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/
Amazon listing of The Transparent Cabal:
Best,
Stephen Sniegoski
__________________________________________________________
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
Washington’s Farewell Address 1796
[Section dealing with Foreign Policy ]
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it – It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.
How far in the discharge of my official duties I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them.
In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my proclamation of the twenty-second of April, I793, is the index of my plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice, and by that of your representatives in both houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or divert me from it.
After deliberate examination, with the aid of the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take, and was bound in duty and interest to take, a neutral position. Having taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain it, with moderation, perseverance, and firmness.
The considerations which respect the right to hold this conduct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right, so far from being denied by any of the belligerent powers, has been virtually admitted by all.
The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.
The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With me a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.
Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.
Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.
Britain’s Inquiry into the Iraq War and the Israel Lobby Taboo
Britain’s Inquiry into the Iraq War and the Israel Lobby Taboo
Friday, February 12, 2010 4:52 AM
From: “Stephen Sniegoski”
Friends,
Government investigations of controversial events are invariably whitewashes to protect the government and eliminate the truth. So it is to a large degree with Britain’s Iraq Inquiry, which Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on June 15, 2009 for the stated purpose of identifying lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict. The Iraq Inquiry was officially launched on July 30, 2009 but did not begin its deliberations until November. It is being run by a committee of five persons chaired by Sir John Chilcot, and thus is commonly dubbed the Chilcot Inquiry.
[Iraq Inquiry web site: http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/ ]
The Inquiry Committee is stacked against truth since one of the five members of the committee, Sir Lawrence Freedman was a foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and another member, Martin Gilbert (Churchill’s biographer) is very pro-Israel and idealizes Tony Blair as a great leader. But despite the fact that the board was stacked against truth, some element of truth has been able to seep through. And recently it has been reported in the mainstream press in the UK and even in the US that testimony at the Inquiry revealed that Blair and Bush had agreed upon military action against Iraq as early as April 2002 though this decision on war was never revealed to the US people or to Congress. In fact, the October 11, 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq did not expressly spell out war and President Bush claimed at that time that it was not a mandate for war but could be used to bring about a solution by peaceful means.
Barely mentioned in the mainstream US or UK media, however, were statements made by Tony Blair in his testimony before the Inquiry referring to the involvement of Israel in the decision for war. This is brought out in a piece by Stephen M. Walt, the co-author along with John J. Mearsheimer of the bombshell work, “The Israel Lobby.” Walt points out that Blair stated that in his meeting with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002 the issue of Israel loomed large:
“As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.”
Walt points out: “Notice that Blair is not saying that Israel dreamed up the idea of attacking Iraq or that Bush was bent on war solely to benefit Israel or even to appease the Israel lobby here at home. But Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war.
“Blair’s comments fit neatly with the argument we make about the lobby and Iraq. Specifically, Professor Mearsheimer and I made it clear in our article and especially in our book that the idea of invading Iraq originated in the United States with the neoconservatives, and not with the Israeli government. But as the neoconservative pundit Max Boot once put it, steadfast support for Israel is ‘a key tenet of neoconservatism.’ Prominent neo-conservatives occupied important positions in the Bush administration, and in the aftermath of 9/11, they played a major role in persuading Bush and Cheney to back a war against Iraq, which they had been advocating since the late 1990s. We also pointed out that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials were initially skeptical of this scheme, because they wanted the U.S. to focus on Iran, not Iraq. However, they became enthusiastic supporters of the idea of invading Iraq once the Bush administration made it clear to them that Iraq was just the first step in a broader campaign of ‘regional transformation’ that would eventually include Iran.”
So, in short, Blair did reveal an Israel connection to the war, that the official gatekeepers of the US (and UK) media have sought to deny, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It should be pointed out, however, that even Walt tends to downplay somewhat the actual extent of the Israel connection. For while it was the neocons who from the late 1990s onward pushed the strategic plan to first attack Iraq before moving on to Iran and Israel’s other Middle East adversaries, their entire plan paralleled earlier schemes developed in Israel, especially by the Likudniks (e.g. Oded Yinon), to destabilize Israel’s enemies by war, starting with a war on Iraq. In short, the neocons were hardly original and the overall destabilization through war strategy originated in Israel for the purpose of advancing Israeli geostrategic interests.
Now the Sharon government did see Iran as its fundamental enemy, but it is not completely certain to what degree Walt is correct in saying: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials were initially skeptical of this [neocon] scheme, because they wanted the U.S. to focus on Iran, not Iraq.” Most studies on Israeli Cabinets going back to Ben-Gurion have indicated differences of opinion regarding exactly what foreign policy strategies to pursue. Ben-Gurion supposedly used the saying: “Two Jews, three opinions.” With this in mind, I would think that some Israelis in high places probably subscribed to the neocon Iraq war position from the beginning, especially since they would know (even if they relied solely on what the neocons said publicly) that Iran would be a future target. And some Israelis did push the neocon line at a very early date, as I bring out in “The Transparent Cabal.” For example, Rafi Eitan, former head of Mossad who had engineered the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, echoed the neocon line in September 2001 by claiming that Saddam was the “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks. (TC, p. 146) And Walt illustrates that by June 2002, after the supposed Crawford agreement, leading Israeli officials were actively pushing for an attack. It is difficult to see evidence of previous opposition to the neocon agenda. It would really seem that if there had been a strong preference to attack Iran, Israeli officials would not have so quickly gotten on the bandwagon for war on Iraq.
Walt acknowledges that the supporters of Israel will continue to make an effort to suppress the truth about the role of Israel and its supporters in bringing about the war on Iraq but Walt does not think it will work. Walt writes: “This campaign won’t work, however, because too many people already know that Israel and the lobby were cheerleaders for the war and with the passage of time, more and more evidence of their influence on the decision for war will leak out. The situation is analogous to what happened with the events surrounding the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. The Johnson administration could dissemble and cover its tracks for a few years, but eventually the real story got out, as will happen with Iraq.”
Obviously, the analogy with the attempted Vietnam cover-up is totally fallacious and one would think that Walt would recognize this. In regard to Vietnam, much, if not most of the media establishment, became opposed to the war by the tail end of the 1960s and the mainstream media (and the academic community) was quite willing to present any information to discredit the war. In contrast, the willingness to mention pro-Israel involvement in the war on Iraq is virtually non-existent in the mainstream media.
Walt actually concedes the mainstream media’s ability to cover-up the Israel issue but holds that the “internet and the blogosphere is allowing the word to spread. Thankfully, we no longer have to rely on the mainstream media to get the story straight.”
This faith in the internet is overrated. People in important positions know it is not career enhancing to quote the non-PC items from the Internet. And while the number of individuals who peruse the Internet is large, the number who actually read material critical of Israel and its lobby is rather small. Mostly, the critics of the Israel lobby are preaching to the choir, not making new converts.
Most Americans still get their news from the mainstream media (including mainstream Internet sites) and thus don’t really know much about the role of Israel and its lobby in influencing US policy. In short, the impact of the Internet dissidents on Israel is rather meager. Again, this is quite a contrast to the impact of the Vietnam war dissenters, who by the end of the 1960s had their views publicized in the mainstream media. While numerous elected officials opposed the Vietnam war, only a very rare elected official will ever dare mention the role of Israel’s supporters in influencing US policy, and usually those officials are about to retire (e.g., Senator Fritz Hollings) or later recant (e.g., Congressman Jim Moran).
Perhaps an even more serious phenomenon is the fear of the critics of the Israel lobby to identify with others who express similar views on the grounds that such an association will lead to charges of anti-Semitism. This observation is based on personal experience concerning the virtual disregard of my book, “The Transparent Cabal,” by anti-war outlets that dare to mention the Israel lobby. Now, my book is far from a best seller but it has sales equal to those of many academic works and it has been praised by a number of individuals of some stature. Yet a significant number of individuals who deal with the Israel lobby topic refuse to mention my work and this includes Mearsheimer and Walt. As a matter of fact, most of these individuals will not even refer to my book in private correspondence. Now my work on the neocons and their connection to Israel is more extensively documented than any other work on the subject and thus provides solid proof for a number of often disputed points. If there are errors in my work it would seem reasonable that others should simply mention them. If I am too harsh toward the neocons or Israel, this could be mentioned too. But instead of being criticized for any faults, my book is treated with silence. This is difficult to explain when it is done by anti-war critics of the Israel lobby, but I guess that when taboo issues are involved the possibility of getting into trouble causes people with something to lose to be exceedingly cautious in being identified with writers lacking mainstream sanction.
I don’t think that I am alone in being ignored in this manner. So if even people such as Mearsheimer and Walt shy away from non-PC authors or from books lacking the imprimatur of big name publishers, it is hard to see how any significant number of people will gain an understanding of the power of the Israel lobby.
Returning to the Chilcot Inquiry, I must mention that the issue of Israel and its supporters has already been touched upon in England and largely silenced with the charge of anti-Semitism. On November 22, 2009, as the Inquiry was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in “The Independent” newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two out of the five members of the Inquiry Committee, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war”. He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish, and that Gilbert was a very strong Zionist. http://tinyurl.com/yz6q55f
Writing in “The Independent” on November 28 and December 12, columnist Richard Ingrams wondered whether the Zionists’ links to the Iraq invasion would be brushed aside. His comments on this issue on December 12 included a favorable reference to my book – “The Transparent Cabal.” (“Richard Ingrams’s Week: Ian Fleming’s creations are preferable to reality,” December 12, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/yb4p7ms )
After these contentions, a number of other commentators from the mainstream media, along with Inquiry Committee member Martin Gilbert, trotted out the lethal charge of anti-Semitism, implying that any allegation that Jews, including very pro-Zionist Jews such as Martin Gilbert, might be naturally biased toward the Jewish state was an example of heinous anti-Semitism. Of course, the potential accusation of anti-Semitism also would ward off any investigation of pro-Zionist influence on war policy in Britain or the United States.
On January 31, I wrote a letter on this subject to “The Independent,” which a friend, James Morris, graciously put forth the effort (making a number of telephone calls) to submit for me. I thought that because of Ingrams’ reference to my book in “The Independent,” that newspaper might be willing to allow me to point out that my book provides extensive evidence of the pro-Israel neoconservatives’ influence in bringing about the US war on Iraq. In my letter, I pointed out that this evidence made it necessary for the Inquiry to engage in an investigation of that charge and to not simply dismiss it as conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Perhaps not surprisingly, my effort failed as the editor replied that the newspaper did not publish “plugs” for books – my reference to the evidence in “The Transparent Cabal” being written off as simply a book “plug.” Of course, this response presented me with a something of a Catch-22 situation since my book provides the necessary proof for the neocon/Israel role in the war on Iraq, which the media luminaries charging anti-Semitism were claiming was obviously untrue. Although “The Independent” refused to run my letter in the print addition, it was allowed to be placed among the online comments – along with myriads of other comments by readers.
[My letter is toward the bottom of the web page http://tinyurl.com/yganmvz ]
The stated purpose of the Chilcot Inquiry is to learn lessons from the Iraq conflict. Obviously the ignoring, or even downplaying, of the role of Israel and its sympathizers will prevent the fundamental lesson from being learned. And it is this lesson that needs to be learned immediately since the Israel and its supporters are the main factor pushing for war on Iran. The hand of Israel is even more explicit in the build-up for war on Iran than it had been in the war on Iraq. In fact, the expressed justifications for war on Iran usually only involve Israel and Jews – allegations about Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial, “wiping Israel off the map,” aiding terrorists against Israel. In fact, most of the expressed reasons for the US to take a militant line against Iran have little to do with any particular danger to the United States. Despite the obvious role of Israel and its supporters in the move toward war on Iran, however, it is still taboo to claim that the war would be fought for the interests of Israel not the United States. Most likely, with the new revelations limited largely to the Bush administration’s early decision for war, the view of the war will only be revised to the extent that it will be seen as resulting from the aberrant views of Bush and Blair, and perhaps Cheney. The role of Israel and its lobby will remain largely unknown. And no connection will be made between the motivation for the war on Iraq and the build-up for the war on Iran, which will continue to be driven by Israel and its lobby unimpeded by any significant criticism.
Transparent Cabal Website:
http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/
Amazon listing of The Transparent Cabal:
Best,
Stephen Sniegoski
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/08/AR2010020802785_pf.html
Washington Post
UK’s Iraq inquiry turns focus to Bush officials
By DAVID STRINGER
The Associated Press
Monday, February 8, 2010; 4:18 PM
LONDON — Britain’s inquiry into the Iraq war will seek meetings with former members of the Bush administration after taking evidence from Tony Blair and other key British officials, the panel’s chairman said Monday.
John Chilcot, head of the inquiry, confirmed that he hopes to obtain evidence from officials in the United States, but did not name specific individuals, or specify if his panel hopes to put questions to former President George W. Bush himself.
“We cannot take formal evidence as such from foreign nationals, but we can of course have discussions with them,” Chilcot said, bringing to a close the inquiry’s first set of public evidence sessions.
The hearings began in November and have seen Blair, current MI6 intelligence agency chief John Sawers, the head of Britain’s military Jock Stirrup and a host of ministers and government officials offer testimony.
Chilcot said his panel will question British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Development Secretary Douglas Alexander in a second set of hearings before summer, and also make plans to gather evidence from U.S. officials and military veterans.
“We will be holding a number of meetings and seminars with a range of individuals, British and non-British … these could include veterans from the Iraq campaign and officials from the former American administration,” Chilcot said.
Inquiry spokesman Rae Stewart said no decision had yet been made on who would be asked to meet with the inquiry panel, or when and where any sessions would take place.
David Sherzer, a spokesman for Bush, declined to comment when asked if any request had so far been made to the former president, or whether he would cooperate if asked.
Several sessions have focused on the accusations that Blair offered Bush support for an invasion as early as April 2002 – a year before legislators approved Britain’s involvement.
Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S., Christopher Meyer, told the inquiry that Bush and Blair used a meeting that April at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, to “sign in blood” an agreement to take military action in Iraq. However, in his testimony, Blair’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, denied any agreement had been made and called Meyer’s account unreliable.
Lawrence Freedman, a military historian who sits on the inquiry’s five-member panel, indicated in questioning that Bush had advised Blair he planned to topple Saddam Hussein even if the despot cooperated with United Nations weapons inspectors.
“Can you start by confirming that you knew that military action was planned by the US for the middle of March, come what may?” Freedman asked ex-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in a hearing Monday. “You were copied in, presumably, to reports of conversations between the prime minister and the president?”
Details of private correspondence between Blair and Bush have been provided to the panel, but have not been released publicly.
Chilcot said his team had been granted access to tens of thousands of government documents, many highly classified. “They allow us to shine a bright light into seldom-seen corners of the government machine,” he said.
Some lawmakers have demanded that letters between Blair and Bush should be made public, but the government has declined.
Brown ordered the inquiry to scrutinize the case made for war and errors in planning for post-conflict reconstruction. Chilcot’s panel will offer recommendations by the end of the year, but won’t apportion blame or but establish criminal or civil liability.
Foreign Policy
I don’t mean to say I told you so, but…
Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, February 8, 2010 – 4:24 PM
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/08/i_dont_mean_to_say_i_told_you_so_but
Probably the most controversial claim in my work with John Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby is our argument that it played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Even some readers who were generally sympathetic to our overall position found that claim hard to accept, and some left-wing critics accused us of letting Bush and Cheney off the hook or of ignoring the importance of other interests, especially oil. Of course, Israel’s defenders in the lobby took issue even more strenuously, usually by mischaracterizing our arguments and ignoring most (if not all) of the evidence we presented.
So I hope readers will forgive me if I indulge today in a bit of self-promotion, or more precisely, self-defense. This week, yet another piece of evidence surfaced that suggests we were right all along (HT to Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman and J. Glatzer at Mondoweiss). In his testimony to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Blair reveals that concerns about Israel were part of the equation and that Israel officials were involved in those discussions.
Take it away, Tony:
As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.”
Notice that Blair is not saying that Israel dreamed up the idea of attacking Iraq or that Bush was bent on war solely to benefit Israel or even to appease the Israel lobby here at home. But Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war.
Blair’s comments fit neatly with the argument we make about the lobby and Iraq. Specifically, Professor Mearsheimer and I made it clear in our article and especially in our book that the idea of invading Iraq originated in the United States with the neoconservatives, and not with the Israeli government. But as the neoconservative pundit Max Boot once put it, steadfast support for Israel is “a key tenet of neoconservatism.” Prominent neo-conservatives occupied important positions in the Bush administration, and in the aftermath of 9/11, they played a major role in persuading Bush and Cheney to back a war against Iraq, which they had been advocating since the late 1990s. We also pointed out that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials were initially skeptical of this scheme, because they wanted the U.S. to focus on Iran, not Iraq. However, they became enthusiastic supporters of the idea of invading Iraq once the Bush administration made it clear to them that Iraq was just the first step in a broader campaign of “regional transformation” that would eventually include Iran.
At that point top Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum became cheerleaders for the invasion, and they played a prominent role in helping to sell the war here in the United States. Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, DC in April 2002 and spoke in the U.S. Senate, telling his audience “the urgent need to topple Saddam is paramount,” and that the campaign “deserves the unconditional support of all sane governments.” (It sure sounds like he was well aware of the discussions in Crawford, doesn’t it?) In May, foreign minister Shimon Peres said on CNN that “Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden,” and that the United States “cannot sit and wait.” A month later, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post recommending that the Bush administration “should, first of all, focus on Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.”
This chorus continued through the summer and fall, with Barak and Netanyahu writing additional op-eds in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, each calling for military action to topple Saddam. Netanyahu’s piece was titled “The Case for Toppling Saddam” and said that “nothing less than dismantling his regime will do.” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s official spokesman, Ra’anan Gissen, offered similar statements during this period as well, and Sharon himself told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee in August 2002 that Iraq was “the greatest danger facing Israel.” According to an Aug. 16 article by Aluf Benn in Ha’aretz, Sharon reportedly told the Bush administration that putting off an attack would “only give [Saddam] more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of WMD.” Foreign Minister Peres reiterated his own warnings as well, and told reporters in September 2002 that “the campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must.” (For sources, see pp. 233-38).
If that’s not enough evidence of where Israel’s leaders were in the run-up to the war, consider that former President Bill Clinton told an audience at an Aspen Institute meeting in 2006 that “every Israeli politician I knew” (and he knows a lot of them) believed that Saddam Hussein was so great a threat that he should be removed even if he did not have WMD. Nor is this testimony at all surprising, given that we are talking about the leader who had fired Scud missiles into Israel during the first Gulf War in 1991 and had been giving money to the families of suicide bombers. If the Bush administration was bent on taking him out and then turning its gun-sights on Syria and Iran, one can easily understand why Israelis would welcome it.
Now, what about key groups in the lobby itself? If the neoconservatives deserve the blame for dreaming up the idea of invading Iraq, key groups and individuals in the lobby played an important role in selling it on Capitol Hill and to the public at large. AIPAC head Howard Kohr told the New York Sun in January 2003 that one of the organization’s “success stories” over the previous year was “quietly lobbying Congress” to approve the resolution authorizing the use of force, a fact confirmed by journalists such as Nathan Guttman of the Forward, Michelle Goldberg of Salon.com, John B. Judis of the New Republic, and even Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Yorker (see p. 242). Pundits at pro-Israel think tanks like the Brookings Institutions’s Saban Center were openly backing war by the fall of 2002, with Martin Indyk, the head of the center, and Kenneth Pollack, its director of research, playing especially prominent roles.
Moreover, in this same period both the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations voted to endorse the use of force “as a last resort.” Mortimer Zuckerman, a well-connected businessman and publisher who was then the chairman of the Conference of Presidents, was especially convinced about the futility of U.N. inspections and the need to topple Saddam, and wrote several editorials making that case in his magazine (U.S. News and World Report).
Still skeptical? Consider the following passage from an article by Matthew Berger of the Jewish Telegraph Agency, published just after President Bush’s September 2002 appearance at the United Nations, where he threatened military action if Iraq did not comply with U.N. resolutions:
Despite their caution and without specifying a formal policy, Jewish leaders predominantly expressed support for Bush’s words at the United Nations.
They said he detailed a strong case that Saddam has consistently ignored U.N. resolutions, that he was seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam has shown a propensity towards using them.
“Iraq is the single most important threat right now to world peace and to our safety,” said Dr. Mandell Ganchrow, executive vice president of the Orthodox Religious Zionists of America. He described Saddam as a “maniac” who “has proven that he will gas his own people.”
“The fanaticism that exists throughout the Middle East is best addressed by first dealing with Iraq,” agreed Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
Many American Jewish leaders expressed the fear that Saddam has not been quiet for the past decade because of a loss of will, but because he has been using the time to garner weapons for an eventual attack on U.S. interests and allies.
“Do we have to wait until a target is hit, and the world says, ‘Ah, yes, he did have weapons of mass destruction,’” asked David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee.”
Not to be outdone, the editor of Jewish Week, Gary Rosenblatt, wrote an editorial in mid-December 2002 saying that “Washington’s imminent war on Saddam Hussein is . . . an opportunity to rid the world of a dangerous tyrant who present a particularly horrific threat Israel.” He went on to say “the Torah instructs that when you enemy seeks to kill you kill him first. Self-defense is not permitted; it is commanded.” Even the relatively liberal Rabbi David Saperstein of the Union of Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center told journalist Michelle Goldberg that “the Jewish community would want to see a forceful resolution to the threat that Saddam Hussein poses.” “Forceful resolution” means war, and Saperstein also offered comparisons to the Bosnian conflict and the Nazi era to reinforce his call for military action.
Finally, consider the following passage from an editorial in the Jewish newspaper Forward, published in 2004:
As President Bush attempted to sell the war .. in Iraq, America’s most important Jewish organizations rallied as one to his defense. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Some groups went even further, arguing that that the removal of the Iraqi leaders would represent a significant step toward bringing peace to the Middle East and winning America’s war on terrorism”
The editorial also noted that “concern for Israel’s safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.”
The Forward, it is worth noting, is well-connected and has a well-deserved reputation for probity in its reporting on the American Jewish community. It is hard to see how its editors could be mistaken about such an important issue or why they would lie about it. And they never issued a retraction. We can therefore assume that the writers of this editorial knew what they were talking about: key groups in the lobby supported the war. Reasonable people can disagree about how important their influence was, of course, but at a minimum these groups reinforced the Bush administration’s resolve and made it less likely that other politicians or commentators would conduct a serious debate about the wisdom of the invasion.
Finally, it bears reiterating that I am talking about key groups and individuals in the Israel lobby, and not about the American Jewish community in toto. Indeed, my co-author and I have repeatedly pointed to surveys showing that American Jews were less supportive of the decision to invade Iraq than the American population as a whole, and we have emphasized that it would be a cardinal error (as well as dangerous) to try to “blame the Jews” for the war. Rather, blame should be reserved for Bush and Cheney (who made the ultimate decision for war), for the neoconservatives who dreamed up this foolish idea, and for the various groups and individuals — including those in the lobby — who helped sell it.
Nor am I suggesting that these individuals advocated this course because they thought it would be good for Israel but bad for the United States. Rather, they unwisely believed it would be good for both countries. And as we all know, they were tragically wrong.
That misconception helps us understand why the Israelis and their American friends who promoted the Iraq war didn’t do a better job of covering their tracks and obscuring their enthusiasm for the endeavor. I suspect it is because they genuinely believed that the war would be easy and would bring great benefits for both Israel and the United States. If the war was a smashing success, then they would reap the credit and no one would spend that much time probing the war’s origins. And even if someone did, its proponents would be hailed as strategic geniuses who had conceived and planned a stunning victory. Once the war went south, however, and numerous people began to probe how this disaster came about, an extensive dust-kicking operation to veil the role of Israel and the lobby was set in motion.
This campaign won’t work, however, because too many people already know that Israel and the lobby were cheerleaders for the war and with the passage of time, more and more evidence of their influence on the decision for war will leak out. The situation is analogous to what happened with the events surrounding the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. The Johnson administration could dissemble and cover its tracks for a few years, but eventually the real story got out, as will happen with Iraq. Indeed, Blair’s testimony is evidence of that process at work.
For sure, many Israelis and their friends in the United States will continue to maintain that the Sharon government actually tried to stop the march to war and that groups in the lobby – including AIPAC — stayed on the sideline and did not push for war. But these post hoc fairy tales will be increasingly hard to sell to the American people, not only because there is a growing body of evidence which directly contradicts them (see pp. 261-262) , but also because the internet and the blogosphere is allowing the word to spread. Thankfully, we no longer have to rely on the mainstream media to get the story straight.
Finally, let’s not forget that while the Iraq war has been a disaster for the United States, it has also been very bad for Israel, not just because its principal patron has been stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, but also because the biggest winner from the war was Iran, which is the country that Israel fears most. All of this shows that despite the lobby’s openly-stated commitment to promoting policies that it thinks will benefit Israel, it did not work out that way with the Iraq war. Nor is it working out that way with its unyielding support of Israel’s self-destructive drive to colonize the Occupied Territories, a process that is turning Israel into an apartheid state. And the same warning applies to its efforts to keep all options-including the use of force — “on the table” vis-à-vis Iran.
Given all the problems that the lobby’s prescriptions have produced in recent years, you’d think U.S. leaders would have learned to ignore its advice. But there’s little sign of that so far, which means that these past errors are likely to be repeated. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/03/iraq-inquiry-blair-missile-shield-iran
The lessons of Iraq have been ignored. The target is now Iran
The US military buildup in the Gulf and Blair’s promotion of war against Tehran are a warning of yet another catastrophe
Seumas Milne
Wednesday 3 February 2010 21.00 GM
We were supposed to have learned the lessons of the Iraq war. That’s what Britain’s Chilcot inquiry is meant to be all about. But the signs from the Middle East are that it could be happening all over again. The US is escalating the military build-up in the Gulf, officials revealed this week, boosting its naval presence and supplying tens of billions of dollars’ worth of new weapons systems to allied Arab states.
The target is of course Iran. Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain are all taking deliveries of Patriot missile batteries. In Saudi Arabia, Washington is sponsoring a 30,000-strong force to protect oil installations and ports. The UAE alone has bought 80 F16 fighters, and General Petraeus, the US commander, claims it could now “take out the entire Iranian airforce”.
The US insists the growing militarisation is defensive, aimed at deterring Iran, calming Israel and reassuring its allies. But the shift of policy is clear enough. Last week Barack Obama warned that Iran would face “growing consequences” for failing to halt its nuclear programme, while linking it with North Korea – as George Bush did, in his “axis of evil” speech in 2002.
When Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week renewed Iran’s earlier agreement to ship most of its enriched uranium abroad to be reprocessed, the US was dismissive. Obama’s “outstretched hand”, always combined with the threat of sanctions or worse, appears to have been all but withdrawn.
The US vice-president, Joe Biden, underlined that by insisting Iran’s leaders were “sowing the seeds of their own destruction”. And in Israel, which has vowed to take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, threats of war against its allies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, are growing. “We must recruit the whole world to fight Ahmadinejad,” Israeli president Shimon Peres declared on Tuesday.
The echoes of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq are unmistakable. Just as in 2002-3, we are told that a dictatorial Middle Eastern state is secretly developing weapons of mass destruction, defying UN resolutions, obstructing inspections, threatening its neighbours and supporting terrorism.
As in the case of Iraq, no evidence has been produced to back up the WMD claims, though bogus leaks about secret programmes are regularly reproduced in the mainstream press. Most recently, a former CIA official reported that US intelligence believed documents, published in the Times, purporting to show Iran planning to experiment on a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, had been forged. Shades of Iraq’s non-existent attempts to buy uranium in Niger.
In case anyone missed the parallels, Tony Blair hammered them home at the Iraq inquiry last Friday. Far from showing remorse about the bloodshed he helped unleash on the Iraqi people, the former prime minister was allowed to turn what was supposed to be a grilling into a platform for war against Iran.
In a timely demonstration that neoconservatism is alive and well and living in London, Blair attempted to use the fact that Iraq had no WMD as part of a case for taking the same approach against Iran. Perceived intention and potential capability were enough to justify war, it turned out. Mentioning Iran 58 times, he explained that the need to “deal” with Iran raised “very similar issues to the ones we are discussing”.
You might think that the views of a man that 37% of British people now believe should be put on trial for war crimes would be treated with contempt. But Blair remains the Middle East envoy of the Quartet – the US, UN, EU and Russia – even as he pockets £1m a year from a UAE investment fund currently negotiating a slice of the profits from the exploitation of Iraqi oil reserves.
Nor is he alone in pressing the case for war on Iran. Another neocon outrider from the Bush era, Daniel Pipes, wrote this week that the only way for Obama to save his presidency was to “bomb Iran” and destroy the country’s “nuclear-weapon capacity”, entailing few politically troublesome US “boots on the ground” or casualties.
The reality is that such an attack would be potentially even more devastating than the aggression against Iraq. Iran has the ability to deliver armed retaliation, both directly and through its allies, which would not only engulf the region but block the 20% of global oil supplies shipped through the straits of Hormuz. It would also certainly set back the cause of progressive change in Iran.
Iran is a divided authoritarian state, now cracking down harshly on the opposition. But it is not a dictatorship in the Saddam Hussein mould. Unlike Iraq, Israel, the US and Britain, Iran has not invaded and occupied anybody’s territory, but has the troops of two hostile, nuclear-armed powers on its borders. And for all Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory rhetoric, it is the nuclear-armed US and Israel that maintain the option of an attack on Iran, not the other way round.
Nor has the UN nuclear agency, the IAEA, found any evidence that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons, while the US’s own national intelligence estimate found that suspected work on a weapons programme had stopped in 2003, though that may now be adjusted in the new climate. Iran’s leadership has long insisted it does not want nuclear weapons, even while many suspect it may be trying to become a threshold nuclear power, able to produce weapons if threatened. Given the recent history of the region, that would hardly be surprising.
For the US government, as during the Bush administration, the real problem is Iran’s independent power in the most sensitive region in the world – heightened by the Iraq war. The signals coming out of Washington are mixed. The head of US National Intelligence implied on Tuesday there was nothing the US could do to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons if it chose to do so. Perhaps the military build-up in the Gulf is just sabre rattling. The preference is clearly for regime change rather than war.
But Israel is most unlikely to roll over if that option fails, and the risks of the US and its allies, including Britain, being drawn into the fallout from any attack would be high. As was discovered in the case of Iraq, the views of outriders like Blair and Pipes can quickly become mainstream. If we are to avoid a replay of that catastrophe, pressure to prevent war with Iran will have to start now.
——————————————————————————–
The Chilcot Inquiry: Britain’s 9/11 Commission
From engagement to confrontation with Iran
From engagement to confrontation with Iran
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8509607.stm
US seeks significant Iran sanctions
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/201029225956412321.html
The lessons of Iraq have been ignored. The target is now Iran
http://america-hijacked.com/2010/02/10/the-lessons-of-iraq-have-been-ignored-the-target-is-now-iran/
Brown warns Iran over nuclear program
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3847834,00.html
Israel and the US preparing for Iran Part 1 – The Military Perspective
http://www.paltelegraph.com/…the-military-perspective
U.S. vows commitment to Israel, wary of war over Iran nukes
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149616.html
U.S Army Chief: “Iran attack option on the table”
Zionism Unmasked: End of Zionism = Peace
Zionism Unmasked: End of Zionism = Peace
By Jeff Gates
February 11, 2010
While Zionism is clearly a nationalist ideology, that narrow framing does the term an injustice as it is so much more.
Zionism is more accurately described as a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behavior. Naïve Jews were its first victims when induced to identify with an enclave in the Middle East that President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was induced to recognize as a “state.”
Zionism is first and foremost a mental state that manifests as a dispersed form of internalized nationalism—a Diaspora—that binds to an extremist enclave those who may never set foot there. After 1967, this “state” became the “Land of Israel” based on a more expansive area seized by Israel Defense Forces along with other occupied lands that Zionists claim a god gave them.
Zionism recruits by sustaining a shared sense of insecurity within the broader Jewish community. It progresses by marketing its perceived vulnerability and victimhood among those on whom it relies for financial, military and diplomatic support.
When, as now, policies of the Zionist state come under attack, media campaigns herald an outbreak of anti-Semitism and hatred—not for Zionism but for Jews, enhancing recruitment.
By choosing to identify their interests with those of Zionism, Jews choose to make themselves feel insecure. Zionism relies for its success not only on deception but also on self-deceit.
Many well-informed Jews opposed Israel’s founding in 1948. By 1967, Jewish-Americans were active in the civil rights movement. With the Six-Day War, that activism became problematic. How could Jews back civil rights for Blacks while Zionism denied those rights to Palestinians?
That era marked a turning point both for Zionism and legitimate Judaism as many Jews abandoned civil rights activism when they could no longer reconcile their activism with Israeli oppression. Thus the present mental state of Barack Obama’s many Jewish Zionist advisers.
The Six-Day War induced more Jews to identify with Zionism as a defender of Jews. Yet now we know that war was a long-planned land grab destined to outrage Arabs and Muslims. When combined with a murderous occupation, decades of Israeli provocations were guaranteed to evoke the violent reactions required to rationalize a “war on terrorism.”
In terms of game theory war planning, today’s results were perfectly predictable—mathematically model-able within an acceptable range of probabilities. Once again Zionism targeted thought and emotion to manipulate behavior by provoking antagonism and evoking extremism—the two key ingredients required to plausibly proclaim their insecurity.
When your numbers are few and your ambitions vast, what choice did Zionists have but to seduce and deceive a super power so that our military would wage their wars for Greater Israel?
Peace is the Opponent
Peace is a perilous ‘state’ to be avoided at any cost by a nationalist ideology that thrives on serial crises wed to a perpetual state of conflict and fear. To realize the Zionist goal of hegemony over the Middle East requires a series of plausible Evil Doers and a persuasive narrative. Could Zionism be the reason we segued so seamlessly from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism?
See: How Israel Wages War on the U.S. http://criminalstate.com/2010/01/how-israel-wages-war-on-the-u-s-—by-way-of-deception/
Instead of the anticipated post-Cold War “peace dividend, the U.S. finds itself waging what Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz calls The $3 Trillion War—all of it borrowed, including $700 billion in interest expense.
In hindsight, the phony intelligence that induced us to war in the Middle East was traceable to Israelis, pro-Israelis or assets developed for that purpose such as Iraqi liar Ahmad Chalabi.
Other than those sharing a Zionist mental state, who had the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation-state intelligence to conduct such operations inside the U.S.?
Yet even now those responsible elude accountability and even scrutiny as cries of “anti-Semitism” are deployed to intimidate and misdirect—by manipulating thought and emotion.
At the end of World War II, the U.S. claimed 50% of the world’s productive power, ensuring we would have the world’s top-rated government bonds for at least two generations. When the Cold War drew to a costly close in 1989, the U.S. had spent $15.9 trillion on defense since 1948 (in 2010 dollars). Now a potential war without end has taken its place.
Americans have been induced to believe that the Zionist state is an ally. We are not alone in viewing Israel as a legitimate nation and a noble experiment to provide a “homeland” for a victimized people. That alluring storyline victimized the broader Jewish community while also laying waste to the nation that was first deceived to extend to Zionists the hand of friendship.
To escape the ravages of Zionism requires that we concede its duplicitous nature and make its operations transparent so that its perpetrators become apparent. As a long-deceived global public grasps its costs in blood and treasure, this mental state will be seen for what it is: a criminal state.
The Psychopath Within
In the clinical psychiatric literature, this “state” features interpersonal traits such as superficial charm, pathological lying, egocentricity, lack of remorse, and callousness that are regarded as characteristic of psychopaths. In order to betray, psychopaths first befriend. In order to defraud, they first establish a relationship of trust. Sound familiar?
Those who share such a mental state will happily incite hatred to catalyze a reaction and then claim they are the victims of hate. For those inhabiting this mental state, it appears rational and even desirable to provoke a response and then claim to be a target of anti-Semites. Inside this internal state, self-absorption is all-encompassing with arrogance its most visible trait.
Law is irrelevant to those who consider themselves above the law. Morality and conscience are of no concern to those who consider themselves The Chosen—by a god of their own choosing. Such a nationalist ideology has no place in a system nation states dedicated to the rule of law.
Those sharing such a “state” pose too great a peril to be an object of pity or compassion. Accountability is the only appropriate response along with an initiative—deploying force as required—to secure any weapons of mass destruction that may be in their possession.
Such a state cannot be delegitimized because any legitimacy attained was integral to the fraud it inflicted on the community of nations. The issue at hand is how best to protect a peace-seeking world from a psychopathic ideology that assumed the appearance of legitimacy so that a Christian Zionist president could be deceived to recognize as a nation a criminal state.
Jeff Gates
Jeff Gates: A widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates’ latest book is Guilt By Association —How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. For two decades, an adviser to policy-makers worldwide. Counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (1980-87)