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Today's
Stories
March 5, 2004
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
March
5, 2004
Faltering Neo-Cons
Still Dangerous
How
They Might Influence the Election
By BILL CHRISTISON
Former
CIA Analyst
(A
Primer for a Talk in Santa Fe, New Mexico.)
You've all surely heard widely varying stories
about how much power, or how little power, the so-called neoconservatives
-- or neocons -- have inside the Bush administration. I've been
asked to explain, briefly, some of the mysteries about these
neocons and what role, if any, they might play in this year's
election.
To start with, let's spend a minute or
two on definitions -- who's a neocon and who is not? Specifically,
President George W. Bush and his very highest-level foreign policy
advisers are not neocons. Bush himself, as well as Vice-President
Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, are all just plain conservatives
and always have been, with nothing "neo" about them.
(Secretary of State Colin Powell is not a neocon either, but
in the eyes of many Washington insiders he is also not really
a part of this inner sanctum that dominates the actual making
of U.S. foreign policy these days.)
The real neocons are those who started
out as liberals or at least Democrats and who later proudly became
Republicans. They are all one or more rungs below Bush's top
foreign policy advisers in the hierarchies of our nation's capital.
Others, generally younger officials, are happy to call themselves
neocons, even though technically they cannot claim to be neo-anythings,
because they never were liberals and never switched parties.
In their careers to date, they've always been conservatives.
But they too claim the neocon label.
A few of the neocons (Paul Wolfowitz,
Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, "Scooter" Libby, John
Bolton, and Elliott Abrams) wield real power in Washington. Most,
however, do not. In general, the neocons and their supporters
who are not in top jobs are advocates, spokesmen, think tank
idea-men, writer-flacks, and rationalizers of policies that would
never be implemented unless they were converted into official
policy by Bush himself and his top advisers, and by those who
have paid the most money for his elevation to the presidency,
the leaders of the corporate and military power structure that
dominates the country's politics. This structure, of course,
is far greater than just a small group of leaders. It includes
thousands of defense and high-tech workers, contractors, government
employees, military personnel, members of Congress, investment
firms, many lawyers and judges, and lobbyists, foreign and domestic,
who see their future livelihood as dependent on the continuation
of this system.
Within this entire conglomerate, the
neocons definitely wield real power and influence, even though
none of them at present occupies a cabinet-level position. But
one thing and only one thing makes them important -- the fact
that with minor exceptions, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice
have enthusiastically accepted all the early phases of the policy
agenda that has, since the early 1990s, been the very trademark
of the neocons. This agenda includes a general, or global, aspect
and another aspect that gives greater emphasis to the Middle
East than to any other area. The global agenda includes constantly
expanding U.S. military expenditures, a unilateral U.S. drive
for global domination, and increased control over the world's
fossil fuel supplies. The Middle East agenda includes the strengthening
of Israeli/U.S. partnership and hegemony throughout the region
and, in furtherance thereof, advocacy of war, first against Iraq
and then if necessary against Syria, Iran, and possibly other
Middle Eastern states.
In effect, Bush has made at least the
early stages of these policies his own. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and
Rice support them. Early on, Colin Powell may have had qualms
about these policies, but, good soldier that he is, his loyalty
to the Bush family quickly overcame his qualms.
The neocons are lying low at the moment,
for a couple of reasons. Since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq,
they have gone through an early phase of riding high and wanting
to capitalize on their success, and then a "downer"
phase -- still continuing -- of nagging constant casualties and
instability in Iraq. This is one reason for downplaying their
own role in policymaking. Another is their ties to Israel. Some
of the most important neocons support and encourage practically
every policy of Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud government, although
they choose not to advertise these close ties. Too much talk
by the neocons poses some danger for Bush in this election year.
His political handlers surely want to avoid the embarrassment
that might result if it became more widely accepted that one
of the real U.S. motives in invading Iraq was to strengthen Israel's
military position and political dominance throughout the Middle
East. It has been important ever since Bush took office in January
2001 for the administration to downplay any connection between
Israel and the war against Iraq. Obfuscating the "Israeli
motive" of the war was almost certainly one of the reasons
the administration so transparently exaggerated first Iraq's
possession of weapons of mass destruction and, more recently,
Washington's desire for democracy in Iraq.
So supporters of Bush have launched a
two-pronged counterattack, arguing first that the influence of
the neocons over U.S. foreign policy is a myth and, second, that
if you are dumb enough to believe the myth, it is almost a sure
thing that you are also an anti-Semite. A great example of this
approach was written by David Brooks, one of the New York
Times' more conservative columnists, who also appears frequently
on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer. In his January
6, 2004 Times column, Brooks wrote:
"Theories about the tightly knit
neocon cabal came in waves. One day you read that neocons were
pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into Syria. Web sites
appeared detailing neocon conspiracies . . . The full-mooners
fixated on a think tank called the Project for the New American
Century [or PNAC] . . . To hear these people describe it, PNAC
is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the
sprawling neocon tentacles . . . In truth, the people labeled
neocons (con is short for 'conservative' and neo is short for
'Jewish') travel in widely different circles and don't actually
have much contact with one another . . . There have been hundreds
of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power
over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration
officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or
Cheney since they assumed office . . . It's true that both Bush
and the people labeled neocons agree that Saddam Hussein represented
a unique threat to world peace. But . . . all evidence suggests
that Bush formed his conclusions independently . . . Still, there
are apparently millions of people who cling to the notion that
the world is controlled by well-organized and malevolent forces.
And for a subset of these people, Jews are a handy explanation
for everything . . . Anti-Semitism is resurgent."
This piece by David Brooks is an effort,
first, to divert attention from the extraordinarily well documented
influence of the neocons and, second, to squelch criticism of
what many Americans believe are dangerous U.S. policies toward
Israel, Iraq, and the entire Middle East. The views of the neocons
have in no sense been a conspiracy. Information about them is
wide open and readily available. Raising the charge of anti-Semitism
against those who criticize U.S. -- and Israeli -- policies
is, to put it bluntly, appalling but not surprising. The British
journalist Robert Fisk has commented, with respect to the Brooks
column, that:
"Brooks even tries to erase the
word 'neo-conservative' from the narrative of the Iraq war .
. . And so here we go again. No weapons of mass destruction.
No links between Saddam and 11 September. No democracy. Blame
the press. Blame the BBC. Blame the spooks. But don't blame Messers
Bush and Blair. And don't blame the American neo-conservatives
who helped to push the US into this disaster. They don't even
exist. And if you say they did, you know what you're going to
be called."
Most people who are knowledgeable on
Middle Eastern affairs believe, as Robert Fisk does, that the
neocons are in no way a myth. And in the area of intelligence,
it is quite clear that the neocons are right now trying to expand
their influence. They are trying to switch the entire blame for
the fiasco over weapons of mass destruction and the continuing
killings in Iraq to the CIA. There is no question that the CIA
deserves some of the criticism directed against it, but most
of the blame in my view belongs to the administration's own distortions
and exaggerations of intelligence. The neocons want to reorganize
the intelligence apparatus of the United States to make it even
easier for the administration to introduce more
distortions and exaggerations into intelligence analysis in the
future. The proper answer here is to make the CIA less susceptible
to any administration's attempts to slant and twist intelligence
analysis to its own liking. (For proposals on precisely how the
CIA should be reorganized, see http://www.counterpunch.org/)
One of the problems we face in trying
to evaluate the true influence of the neocons in supporting aggressive
U.S. foreign policies that strengthen Israel's position throughout
the Middle East is the need to determine the relative weight
of the neocons versus other factors that are also at work in
influencing U.S. policy toward Israel. One of these other factors
is AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the
principal pro-Israel lobby organization -- and its numerous subsidiary
lobbies that are able to generate majority support in both houses
of Congress for almost any measure that the government of Israel
wants. Without the activities of these organizations, the influence
of the neocons in Washington would be diminished, although by
how much we cannot say.
It suffices to know, however, that the
neocons and the lobby together form a very powerful mutual support
society, and their relationship is symbiotic in the extreme.
The neocons, as noted, have long pressed for ever larger military
expenditures by the U.S., thus throwing their full support to
the very groups that finance most heavily the election of today's
presidents. The influence of the lobby, for its part, is far
more than a matter of the money it has to spend. The extremely
close ties that many elements of the U.S. military-industrial
complex have developed in recent decades with the smaller but
also powerful Israeli military-industrial complex magnify the
strength of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington in ways that most
people simply do not comprehend. The Israeli activist, Jeff Halper,
who is the founder and head of the Israeli Committee Against
House Demolitions and has had considerable experience dealing
with members of Congress in recent years, describes it this way:
"Israel has located itself very
strategically right in the center of the global arms industry.
Israel's sophisticated military hardware and military software
are very important to weapons development in the United States.
Israel has also become the main subcontractor of American arms.
Just last year, Israel signed a contract to train and equip the
Chinese army. It signed another multi-billion dollar contract
to train and equip the Indian army. What is it equipping them
with? It is equipping them with American weapons.
"Israel is very important, because
on the one hand it is a very sophisticated, high-tech arms developer
and dealer. But on the other hand, there are no ethical or moral
constraints: there is no Congress, there are no human rights
concerns, there are no laws against taking bribes -- the Israeli
government can do anything it wants to. So you have a very sophisticated
rogue state -- not a Libyan rogue state, but a high tech, military-expert
rogue state. Now that is tremendously useful, both for Europe
and for the United States."
Halper points out that there are still
some American Congressional constraints on selling arms to China
because of China's human rights problems. So Israel modifies
American arms just enough that "they can be considered Israeli
arms, and in that way bypasses Congress." He adds that "for
the most part, Israel is the subcontractor for American arms
to the Third World. There is no terrible regime . . . that does
not have a major military connection to Israel. Israeli arms
dealers are . . . like fish in water in the rough and tumble
countries that eat Americans alive: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia,
China, Indonesia, these countries where Americans just cannot
operate, partly because of business practices, and partly because
they have [Congressional] constraints and laws."
Thus, when AIPAC sells Israel to Congress,
it does not go to congressmen and ask them to support Israel
because it is Judeo-Christian, or because it is the "only
democracy in the Middle East." AIPAC sells Israel by telling
a congressman that he or she should support Israel because this
is how many industries in your state have business links to Israel,
this is how many military research people are sitting
in universities in your district, this is how many jobs
in your district are dependent on the military and the defense
industry. Therefore, if you are voting against Israel, you are
voting against your own best interests. Halper adds that in most
congressional districts, "members of Congress have a great
dependence on the military. More than half of industrial employment
in California is in one way or another connected to defense.
Israel is right there, right in the middle of it all. And that
is part of its strength."
When activists on the other side go to
a member of Congress and talk about human rights, about occupation,
about Palestinians, the congressman usually, in Halper's experience,
says, "Look I know, I read the papers, I'm not dumb, but
that is not the basis on which I vote. The basis on which I vote
is what is good for my constituents."
Although Israel is a tiny country, its
U.S. supporters present it as more than an ally of the United
States. The AIPAC website says, for example, that the job of
Israel is to protect American economic interests in the Middle
East. It even says that Israel is developing laser weapons from
outer space to protect American interests. Israel clearly sees
itself as, and is proud of being, a part of the American Empire.
We need to expose Israel as the regional superpower and necessary
component in the U.S. Empire that it really is.
So both the neocons and these other factors
that strengthen the neocons should be kept in mind when we try
to answer questions about the neocons and the 2004 presidential
election. Let's look at two questions.
First, what role if any will the neocons
and their views on foreign policy play in this year's presidential
election?
Perhaps the neocons will not play any
role, but that may be wishful thinking. If Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and Karl Rove come to believe, around September or October, that
they are likely to lose the election, it is not by any means
beyond belief that they would, in desperation, undertake some
new aggressive and "preemptive" military action against
Syria, Iran, North Korea, or someplace else we cannot now even
anticipate. In other words, a new "October surprise."
They have used lies to instill fear and advance their ill-considered
doctrine of preemption once, and it is not beyond the realm of
possibility that they might do so again. The neocons, of course,
would be among the strongest advocates of such moves, and that
would be one way in which they might influence the election.
Peace movements in this country and around the world should,
in my view, be ready to undertake massive demonstrations in the
hope of preventing such an eventuality.
Second, how might the outcome of the
election affect the neocons themselves?
The answer here is simple, but it is
a limited answer. If the Democrats win back the presidency this
year, the neocons -- or most of them -- will at least temporarily
be out of work, and that will be excellent news. Any conceivable
Democratic administration would implement somewhat less aggressive
and less unilateral foreign policies. But most likely, a Democratic
administration would be almost as beholden to the nation's military-national
security-corporate complex for campaign funding as the present
Republican administration. There would be changes of tone in
U.S. foreign policies, but very likely only limited changes in
the policies themselves. The close ties between the U.S. and
Israeli military-industrial complexes that I described would
continue, and changes in U.S. policies toward the Middle East
would be minimal.
Bill Christison
joined the CIA in 1950 and worked on the analysis side of the
Agency for over 28 years. In the 1970s he served as a National
Intelligence Officer (principal adviser of the Director of Central
Intelligence) for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. Before
his retirement in 1979, he was Director of the CIA's Office of
Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit. He can be
reached at: christison@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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