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Today's
Stories
September 6,
2004
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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.
|
Labor Day
September 6, 2004
Dual Loyalties
The
Bush Neocons and Israel
By
KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
Former
CIA political analysts
[Editors'
Note: This is a slightly revised version of essay that originally
appeared in CounterPunch in December 2002. The piece also appeared
in The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.]
Since the long-forgotten days when the
State Department's Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called
Arabists, U.S. policy on Israel and the Arab world has increasingly
become the purview of officials well known for tilting toward
Israel. From the 1920s roughly to 1990, Arabists, who had a personal
history and an educational background in the Arab world and were
accused by supporters of Israel of being totally biased toward
Arab interests, held sway at the State Department and, despite
having limited power in the policymaking circles of any administration,
helped maintain some semblance of U.S. balance by keeping policy
from tipping over totally toward Israel. But Arabists have been
steadily replaced by their exact opposites, what some observers
are calling Israelists, and policymaking circles throughout government
now no longer even make a pretense of exhibiting balance between
Israeli and Arab, particularly Palestinian, interests.
In the Clinton administration,
the three most senior State Department officials dealing with
the Palestinian-Israeli peace process were all partisans of Israel
to one degree or another. All had lived at least for brief periods
in Israel and maintained ties with Israel while in office, occasionally
vacationing there. One of these officials had worked both as
a pro-Israel lobbyist and as director of a pro-Israel think tank
in Washington before taking a position in the Clinton administration
from which he helped make policy on Palestinian-Israeli issues.
Another has headed the pro-Israel think tank since leaving government.
The link between active promoters
of Israeli interests and policymaking circles is stronger by
several orders of magnitude in the Bush administration, which
is peppered with people who have long records of activism on
behalf of Israel in the United States, of policy advocacy in
Israel, and of promoting an agenda for Israel often at odds with
existing U.S. policy. These people, who can fairly be called
Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from
desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary
level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security
Council staff and in the vice president's office.
We still tiptoe around putting
a name to this phenomenon. We write articles about the neo-conservatives'
agenda on U.S.-Israeli relations and imply that in the neo-con
universe there is little light between the two countries. We
talk openly about the Israeli bias in the U.S. media. We make
wry jokes about Congress being "Israeli-occupied territory."
Jason Vest in The Nation magazine reported forthrightly that
some of the think tanks that hold sway over Bush administration
thinking see no difference between U.S. and Israeli national
security interests. But we never pronounce the particular words
that best describe the real meaning of those observations and
wry remarks. It's time, however, that we say the words out loud
and deal with what they really signify.
Dual loyalties. The issue we
are dealing with in the Bush administration is dual loyalties
-- the double allegiance of those myriad officials at high and
middle levels who cannot distinguish U.S. interests from Israeli
interests, who baldly promote the supposed identity of interests
between the United States and Israel, who spent their early careers
giving policy advice to right-wing Israeli governments and now
give the identical advice to a right-wing U.S. government, and
who, one suspects, are so wrapped up in their concern for the
fate of Israel that they honestly do not know whether their own
passion about advancing the U.S. imperium is motivated primarily
by America-first patriotism or is governed first and foremost
by a desire to secure Israel's safety and predominance in the
Middle East through the advancement of the U.S. imperium.
"Dual loyalties"
has always been one of those red flags posted around the subject
of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that induces
horrified gasps and rapid heartbeats because of its implication
of Jewish disloyalty to the United States and the common assumption
that anyone who would speak such a canard is ipso facto an anti-Semite.
(We have a Jewish friend who is not bothered by the term in the
least, who believes that U.S. and Israeli interests should be
identical and sees it as perfectly natural for American Jews
to feel as much loyalty to Israel as they do to the United States.
But this is clearly not the usual reaction when the subject of
dual loyalties arises.)
Although much has been written
about the neo-cons who dot the Bush administration, the treatment
of the their ties to Israel has generally been very gingerly.
Although much has come to light recently about the fact that
ridding Iraq both of its leader and of its weapons inventory
has been on the neo-con agenda since long before there was a
Bush administration, little has been said about the link between
this goal and the neo-cons' overriding desire to provide greater
security for Israel. But an examination of the cast of characters
in Bush administration policymaking circles reveals a startlingly
pervasive network of pro-Israel activists, and an examination
of the neo-cons' voluminous written record shows that Israel
comes up constantly as a neo-con reference point, always mentioned
with the United States as the beneficiary of a recommended policy,
always linked with the United States when national interests
are at issue.
The Begats
First to the cast of characters.
Beneath cabinet level, the list of pro-Israel neo-cons who are
either policy functionaries themselves or advise policymakers
from perches just on the edges of government reads like the old
biblical "begats." Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz leads the pack. He was a protégé of Richard
Perle, who heads the prominent Pentagon advisory body, the Defense
Policy Board. Many of today's neo-cons, including Perle, are
the intellectual progeny of the late Senator Henry "Scoop"
Jackson, a strong defense hawk and one of Israel's most strident
congressional supporters in the 1970s.
Wolfowitz in turn is the mentor
of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice President Cheney's
chief of staff who was first a student of Wolfowitz and later
a subordinate during the 1980s in both the State and the Defense
Departments. Another Perle protégé is Douglas Feith,
who is currently undersecretary of defense for policy, the department's
number-three man, and has worked closely with Perle both as a
lobbyist for Turkey and in co-authoring strategy papers for right-wing
Israeli governments. Assistant Secretaries Peter Rodman and Dov
Zackheim, old hands from the Reagan administration when the neo-cons
first flourished, fill out the subcabinet ranks at Defense. At
lower levels, the Israel and the Syria/Lebanon desk officers
at Defense are imports from the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, a think tank spun off from the pro-Israel lobby
organization, AIPAC.
Neo-cons have not made many
inroads at the State Department, except for John Bolton, an American
Enterprise Institute hawk and Israeli proponent who is said to
have been forced on a reluctant Colin Powell as undersecretary
for arms control. Bolton's special assistant is David Wurmser,
who wrote and/or co-authored with Perle and Feith at least two
strategy papers for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996.
Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser, is a co-founder of the media-watch
website MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), which is
run by retired Israeli military and intelligence officers and
specializes in translating and widely circulating Arab media
and statements by Arab leaders. A recent investigation by the
Guardian of London found that MEMRI's translations are skewed
by being highly selective. Although it inevitably translates
and circulates the most extreme of Arab statements, it ignores
moderate Arab commentary and extremist Hebrew statements.
In the vice president's office,
Cheney has established his own personal national security staff,
run by aides known to be very pro-Israel. The deputy director
of the staff, John Hannah, is a former fellow of the Israeli-oriented
Washington Institute. On the National Security Council staff,
the newly appointed director of Middle East affairs is Elliott
Abrams, who came to prominence after pleading guilty to withholding
information from Congress during the Iran-contra scandal (and
was pardoned by President Bush the elder) and who has long been
a vocal proponent of right-wing Israeli positions. Putting him
in a key policymaking position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
is like entrusting the henhouse to a fox.
Pro-Israel activists with close
links to the administration are also busy in the information
arena inside and outside government. The head of Radio Liberty,
a Cold War propaganda holdover now converted to service in the
"war on terror," is Thomas Dine, who was the very active
head of AIPAC throughout most of the Reagan and the Bush-41 administrations.
Elsewhere on the periphery, William Kristol, son of neo-con originals
Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb, is closely linked to
the administration's pro-Israel coterie and serves as its cheerleader
through the Rupert Murdoch-owned magazine that he edits, The
Weekly Standard. Some of Bush's speechwriters -- including David
Frum, who coined the term "axis of evil" for Bush's
state-of-the-union address but was forced to resign when his
wife publicly bragged about his linguistic prowess -- have come
from The Weekly Standard. Frank Gaffney, another Jackson and
Perle protégé and Reagan administration defense
official, puts his pro-Israel oar in from his think tank, the
Center for Security Policy, and through frequent media appearances
and regular columns in the Washington Times.
The incestuous nature of the
proliferating boards and think tanks, whose membership lists
are more or less identical and totally interchangeable, is frighteningly
insidious. Several scholars at the American Enterprise Institute,
including former Reagan UN ambassador and long-time supporter
of the Israeli right wing Jeane Kirkpatrick, make their pro-Israel
views known vocally from the sidelines and occupy positions on
other boards. Probably the most important organization, in terms
of its influence on Bush administration policy formulation, is
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Formed
after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war specifically to bring Israel's
security concerns to the attention of U.S. policymakers and concentrating
also on broad defense issues, the extremely hawkish, right-wing
JINSA has always had a high-powered board able to place its members
inside conservative U.S. administrations. Cheney, Bolton, and
Feith were members until they entered the Bush administration.
Several lower level JINSA functionaries are now working in the
Defense Department. Perle is still a member, as are Kirkpatrick,
former CIA director and leading Iraq-war hawk James Woolsey,
and old-time rabid pro-Israel types like Eugene Rostow and Michael
Ledeen. Both JINSA and Gaffney's Center for Security Policy are
heavily underwritten by Irving Moskowitz, a right-wing American
Zionist, California business magnate (his money comes from bingo
parlors), and JINSA board member who has lavishly financed the
establishment of several religious settlements in Arab East Jerusalem.
By Their
Own Testimony
Most of the neo-cons now in
government have left a long paper trail giving clear evidence
of their fervently right-wing pro-Israel, and fervently anti-Palestinian,
sentiments. Whether being pro-Israel, even pro right-wing Israel,
constitutes having dual loyalties -- that is, a desire to further
Israel's interests that equals or exceeds the desire to further
U.S. interests -- is obviously not easy to determine, but the
record gives some clues.
Wolfowitz himself has been
circumspect in public, writing primarily about broader strategic
issues rather than about Israel specifically or even the Middle
East, but it is clear that at bottom Israel is a major interest
and may be the principal reason for his near obsession with the
effort, of which he is the primary spearhead, to dump Saddam
Hussein, remake the Iraqi government in an American image, and
then further redraw the Middle East map by accomplishing the
same goals in Syria, Iran, and perhaps other countries. Profiles
of Wolfowitz paint him as having two distinct aspects: one obessively
bent on advancing U.S. dominance throughout the world, ruthless
and uncompromising, seriously prepared to "end states,"
as he once put it, that support terrorism in any way, a velociraptor
in the words of one former colleague cited in the Economist;
the other a softer aspect, which shows him to be a soft-spoken
political moralist, an ardent democrat, even a bleeding heart
on social issues, and desirous for purely moral and humanitarian
reasons of modernizing and democratizing the Islamic world.
But his interest in Israel
always crops up. Even profiles that downplay his attachment to
Israel nonetheless always mention the influence the Holocaust,
in which several of his family perished, has had on his thinking.
One source inside the administration has described him frankly
as "over-the-top crazy when it comes to Israel." Although
this probably accurately describes most of the rest of the neo-con
coterie, and Wolfowitz is guilty at least by association, he
is actually more complex and nuanced than this. A recent New
York Times Magazine profile by the Times' Bill Keller cites critics
who say that "Israel exercises a powerful gravitational
pull on the man" and notes that as a teenager Wolfowitz
lived in Israel during his mathematician father's sabbatical
semester there. His sister is married to an Israeli. Keller even
somewhat reluctantly acknowledges the accuracy of one characterization
of Wolfowitz as "Israel-centric." But Keller goes through
considerable contortions to shun what he calls "the offensive
suggestion of dual loyalty" and in the process makes one
wonder if he is protesting too much. Keller concludes that Wolfowitz
is less animated by the security of Israel than by the promise
of a more moderate Islam. He cites as evidence Wolfowitz's admiration
for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel
and also draws on a former Wolfowitz subordinate who says that
"as a moral man, he might have found Israel the heart of
the Middle East story. But as a policy maker, Turkey and the
gulf and Egypt didn't loom any less large for him."
These remarks are revealing.
Anyone not so fearful of broaching the issue of dual loyalties
might at least have raised the suggestion that Wolfowitz's real
concern may indeed be to ensure Israel's security. Otherwise,
why do his overriding interests seem to be reinventing Anwar
Sadats throughout the Middle East by transforming the Arab and
Muslim worlds and thereby making life safer for Israel, and a
passion for fighting a pre-emptive war against Iraq -- when there
are critical areas totally apart from the Middle East and myriad
other broad strategic issues that any deputy secretary of defense
should be thinking about just as much? His current interest in
Turkey, which is shared by the other neo-cons, some of whom have
served as lobbyists for Turkey, seems also to be directed at
securing Israel's place in the region; there seems little reason
for particular interest in this moderate Islamic, non-Arab country,
other than that it is a moderate Islamic but non-Arab neighbor
of Israel. Furthermore, the notion suggested by the Wolfowitz
subordinate that any moral man would obviously look to Israel
as the "heart of the Middle East story" is itself an
Israel-centered idea: the assumption that Israel is a moral state,
always pursuing moral policies, and that any moral person would
naturally attach himself to Israel automatically presumes that
there is an identity of interests between the United States and
Israel; only those who assume such a complete coincidence of
interests accept the notion that Israel is, across the board,
a moral state.
Others among the neo-con policymakers
have been more direct and open in expressing their pro-Israel
views. Douglas Feith has been the most prolific of the group,
with a two-decade-long record of policy papers, many co-authored
with Perle, propounding a strongly anti-Palestinian, pro-Likud
view. He views the Palestinians as not constituting a legitimate
national group, believes that the West Bank and Gaza belong to
Israel by right, and has long advocated that the U.S. abandon
any mediating effort altogether and particularly foreswear the
land-for-peace formula.
In 1996, Feith, Perle, and
both David and Meyrav Wurmser were among the authors of a policy
paper issued by an Israeli think tank and written for newly elected
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that urged Israel to make a
"clean break" from pursuit of the peace process, particularly
its land-for-peace aspects, which the authors regarded as a prescription
for Israel's annihilation. Arabs must rather accept a "peace-for-peace"
formula through unconditional acceptance of Israel's rights,
including its territorial rights in the occupied territories.
The paper advocated that Israel "engage every possible energy
on rebuilding Zionism" by disengaging from economic and
political dependence on the U.S. while maintaining a more "mature,"
self-reliant partnership with the U.S. not focused "narrowly
on territorial disputes." Greater self-reliance would, these
freelance policymakers told Netanyahu, give Israel "greater
freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure
[i.e., U.S. pressure] used against it in the past."
The paper advocated, even as
far back as 1996, containment of the threat against Israel by
working closely with -- guess who? -- Turkey, as well as with
Jordan, apparently regarded as the only reliably moderate Arab
regime. Jordan had become attractive for these strategists because
it was at the time working with opposition elements in Iraq to
reestablish a Hashemite monarchy there that would have been allied
by blood lines and political leanings to the Hashemite throne
in Jordan. The paper's authors saw the principal threat to Israel
coming, we should not be surprised to discover now, from Iraq
and Syria and advised that focusing on the removal of Saddam
Hussein would kill two birds with one stone by also thwarting
Syria's regional ambitions. In what amounts to a prelude to the
neo-cons' principal policy thrust in the Bush administration,
the paper spoke frankly of Israel's interest in overturning the
Iraqi leadership and replacing it with a malleable monarchy.
Referring to Saddam Hussein's ouster as "an important Israeli
strategic objective," the paper observed that "Iraq's
future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East
profoundly" -- meaning give Israel unquestioned predominance
in the region. The authors urged therefore that Israel support
the Hashemites in their "efforts to redefine Iraq."
In a much longer policy document
written at about the same time for the same Israeli think tank,
David Wurmser repeatedly linked the U.S. and Israel when talking
about national interests in the Middle East. The "battle
to dominate and define Iraq," he wrote "is, by extension,
the battle to dominate the balance of power in the Levant over
the long run," and "the United States and Israel"
can fight this battle together. Repeated references to U.S. and
Israeli strategic policy, pitted against a "Saudi-Iraqi-Syrian-Iranian-PLO
axis," and to strategic moves that establish a balance of
power in which the United States and Israel are ascendant, in
alliance with Turkey and Jordan, betray a thought process that
cannot separate U.S. from Israeli interests.
Perle gave further impetus
to this thrust when six years later, in September 2002, he gave
a briefing for Pentagon officials that included a slide depicting
a recommended strategic goal for the U.S. in the Middle East:
all of Palestine as Israel, Jordan as Palestine, and Iraq as
the Hashemite kingdom. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld seems to
have taken this aboard, since he spoke at about the same time
of the West Bank and Gaza as the "so-called occupied territories"
-- effectively turning all of Palestine into Israel.
Elliott Abrams is another unabashed
supporter of the Israeli right, now bringing his links with Israel
into the service of U.S. policymaking on Palestinian-Israeli
issues. The neo-con community is crowing about Abrams' appointment
as Middle East director on the NSC staff (where this Iran-contra
criminal has already been working since mid-2001, badly miscast
as the director for, of all things, democracy and human rights).
The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes has hailed his appointment
as a decisive move that neatly cocks a snook at the pro-Palestinian
wimps at the State Department. Accurately characterizing Abrams
as "more pro-Israel, less solicitous of Palestinians"
than the State Department and strongly opposed to the Palestinian-Israeli
peace process, Barnes gloats that the Abrams triumph signals
that the White House will not cede control of Middle East policy
to Colin Powell and the "foreign service bureaucrats."
Abrams comes to the post after a year in which it had effectively
been left vacant. His predecessor, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been
serving concurrently as Bush's personal representative to Afghanistan
since the fall of the Taliban and has devoted little time to
the NSC job, but several attempts to appoint a successor early
this year were vetoed by neo-con hawks who felt the appointees
were not devoted enough to Israel.
Although Abrams has no particular
Middle East expertise, he has managed to insert himself in the
Middle East debate repeatedly over the years. He has a family
interest in propounding a pro-Israel view; he is the son-in-law
of Norman Podhoretz, one of the original neo-cons and a long-time
strident supporter of right-wing Israeli causes as editor of
Commentary magazine, and Midge Decter, a frequent right-wing
commentator. Abrams has written a good deal on the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, opposing U.S. mediation and any effort to press for
Israeli concessions. In an article published in advance of the
2000 elections, he propounded a rationale for a U.S. missile
defense system, and a foreign policy agenda in general, geared
almost entirely toward ensuring Israel's security. "It is
a simple fact," he wrote, that the possession of missiles
and weapons of mass destruction by Iraq and Iran vastly increases
Israel's vulnerability, and this threat would be greatly diminished
if the U.S. provided a missile shield and brought about the demise
of Saddam Hussein. He concluded with a wholehearted assertion
of the identity of U.S. and Israeli interests: "The next
decade will present enormous opportunities to advance American
interests in the Middle East [by] boldly asserting our support
of our friends" -- that is, of course, Israel. Many of the
fundamental negotiating issues critical to Israel, he said, are
also critical to U.S. policy in the region and "require
the United States to defend its interests and allies" rather
than giving in to Palestinian demands.
Neo-cons
in the Henhouse
The neo-con strategy papers
half a dozen years ago were dotted with concepts like "redefining
Iraq," "redrawing the map of the Middle East,"
"nurturing alternatives to Arafat," all of which have
in recent months become familiar parts of the Bush administration's
diplomatic lingo. Objectives laid out in these papers as important
strategic goals for Israel -- including the ouster of Saddam
Hussein, the strategic transformation of the entire Middle East,
the death of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, regime change
wherever the U.S. and Israel don't happen to like the existing
government, the abandonment of any effort to forge a comprehensive
Arab-Israeli peace or even a narrower Palestinian-Israeli peace
-- have now become, under the guidance of this group of pro-Israel
neo-cons, important strategic goals for the United States. The
enthusiasm with which senior administration officials like Bush
himself, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have adopted strategic themes originally
defined for Israel's guidance -- and did so in many cases well
before September 11 and the so-called war on terror -- testifies
to the persuasiveness of a neo-con philosophy focused narrowly
on Israel and the pervasiveness of the network throughout policymaking
councils.
Does all this add up to dual
loyalties to Israel and the United States? Many would still contend
indignantly that it does not, and that it is anti-Semitic to
suggest such a thing. In fact, zealous advocacy of Israel's causes
may be just that -- zealotry, an emotional connection to Israel
that still leaves room for primary loyalty to the United States
-- and affection for Israel is not in any case a sentiment limited
to Jews. But passion and emotion -- and, as George Washington
wisely advised, a passionate attachment to any country -- have
no place in foreign policy formulation, and it is mere hair-splitting
to suggest that a passionate attachment to another country is
not loyalty to that country. Zealotry clouds judgment, and emotion
should never be the basis for policymaking.
Zealotry can lead to extreme
actions to sustain policies, as is apparently occurring in the
Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith Defense Department. People knowledgeable
of the intelligence community have said, according to a recent
article in The American Prospect, that the CIA is under tremendous
pressure to produce intelligence more supportive of war with
Iraq -- as one former CIA official put it, "to support policies
that have already been adopted." Key Defense Department
officials, including Feith, are said to be attempting to make
the case for pre-emptive war by producing their own unverified
intelligence. Wolfowitz betrayed his lack of concern for real
evidence when, in answer to a recent question about where the
evidence is for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction,
he replied, "It's like the judge said about pornography.
I can't define it, but I will know it when I see it."
Zealotry can also lead to a
myopic focus on the wrong issues in a conflict or crisis, as
is occurring among all Bush policymakers with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict. The administration's obsessive focus on deposing Yasir
Arafat, a policy suggested by the neo-cons years before Bush
came to office, is a dodge and a diversion that merely perpetuates
the conflict by failing to address its real roots. Advocates
of this policy fail or refuse to see that, however unappealing
the Palestinian leadership, it is not the cause of the conflict,
and "regime change" among the Palestinians will do
nothing to end the violence. The administration's utter refusal
to engage in any mediation process that might produce a stable,
equitable peace, also a neo-con strategy based on the paranoid
belief that any peace involving territorial compromise will spell
the annihilation of Israel, will also merely prolong the violence.
Zealotry produces blindness: the zealous effort to pursue Israel's
right-wing agenda has blinded the dual loyalists in the administration
to the true face of Israel as occupier, to any concern for justice
or equity and any consideration that interests other than Israel's
are involved, and indeed to any pragmatic consideration that
continued unquestioning accommodation of Israel, far from bringing
an end to violence, will actually lead to its tragic escalation
and to increased terrorism against both the United States and
Israel.
What does it matter, in the
end, if these men split their loyalties between the United States
and Israel? Apart from the evidence of the policy distortions
that arise from zealotry, one need only ask whether it can be
mere coincidence that those in the Bush administration who most
strongly promote "regime change" in Iraq are also those
who most strongly support the policies of the Israeli right wing.
And would it bother most Americans to know that the United States
is planning a war against Iraq for the benefit of Israel? Can
it be mere coincidence, for example, that Vice President Cheney,
now the leading senior-level proponent of war with Iraq, repudiated
just this option for all the right reasons in the immediate aftermath
of the Gulf War in 1991? He was defense secretary at the time,
and in an interview with the New York Times on April 13, 1991,
he said:
"If you're going to go
in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad.
Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you will do with
it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place
of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia
regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts
toward the Ba'athists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists.
How much credibility is that government going to have if it's
set up by the United States military when it's there? How long
does the United States military have to stay to protect the people
that sign on for the government, and what happens to it once
we leave?"
Since Cheney clearly changed
his mind between 1991 and today, is it not legitimate to ask
why, and whether Israel might have a greater influence over U.S.
foreign policy now than it had in 1991? After all, notwithstanding
his wisdom in rejecting an expansion of the war on Iraq a decade
ago, Cheney was just as interested in promoting U.S. imperialism
and was at that same moment in the early 1990s outlining a plan
for world domination by the United States, one that did not include
conquering Iraq at any point along the way. The only new ingredient
in the mix today that is inducing Cheney to begin the march to
U.S. world domination by conquering Iraq is the presence in the
Bush-Cheney administration of a bevy of aggressive right-wing
neo-con hawks who have long backed the Jewish fundamentalists
of Israel's own right wing and who have been advocating some
move on Iraq for at least the last half dozen years.
The suggestion that the war
with Iraq is being planned at Israel's behest, or at the instigation
of policymakers whose main motivation is trying to create a secure
environment for Israel, is strong. Many Israeli analysts believe
this. The Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar recently observed frankly
in a Ha'aretz column that Perle, Feith, and their fellow strategists
"are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American
governments and Israeli interests." The suggestion of dual
loyalties is not a verboten subject in the Israeli press, as
it is in the United States. Peace activist Uri Avnery, who knows
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written that Sharon has
long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East
and that "the winds blowing now in Washington remind me
of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their
ideas from him . But the style is the same."
The dual loyalists in the Bush
administration have given added impetus to the growth of a messianic
strain of Christian fundamentalism that has allied itself with
Israel in preparation for the so-called End of Days. These crazed
fundamentalists see Israel's domination over all of Palestine
as a necessary step toward fulfillment of the biblical Millennium,
consider any Israeli relinquishment of territory in Palestine
as a sacrilege, and view warfare between Jews and Arabs as a
divinely ordained prelude to Armageddon. These right-wing Christian
extremists have a profound influence on Bush and his administration,
with the result that the Jewish fundamentalists working for the
perpetuation of Israel's domination in Palestine and the Christian
fundamentalists working for the Millennium strengthen and reinforce
each other's policies in administration councils. The Armageddon
that Christian Zionists seem to be actively promoting and that
Israeli loyalists inside the administration have tactically allied
themselves with raises the horrifying but very real prospect
of an apocalyptic Christian-Islamic war. The neo-cons seem unconcerned,
and Bush's occasional pro forma remonstrations against blaming
all Islam for the sins of Islamic extremists do nothing to make
this prospect less likely.
These two strains of Jewish
and Christian fundamentalism have dovetailed into an agenda for
a vast imperial project to restructure the Middle East, all further
reinforced by the happy coincidence of great oil resources up
for grabs and a president and vice president heavily invested
in oil. All of these factors -- the dual loyalties of an extensive
network of policymakers allied with Israel, the influence of
a fanatical wing of Christian fundamentalists, and oil -- probably
factor in more or less equally to the administration's calculations
on the Palestinian-Israeli situation and on war with Iraq. But
the most critical factor directing U.S. policymaking is the group
of Israeli loyalists: neither Christian fundamentalist support
for Israel nor oil calculations would carry the weight in administration
councils that they do without the pivotal input of those loyalists,
who clearly know how to play to the Christian fanatics and undoubtedly
also know that their own and Israel's bread is buttered by the
oil interests of people like Bush and Cheney. This is where loyalty
to Israel by government officials colors and influences U.S.
policymaking in ways that are extremely dangerous.
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA.
He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director
of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. He is
a contributor to Imperial
Crusades, CounterPunch's new history of the wars on Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Kathleen Christison, a former CIA political analyst, is
the author of Perceptions
of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy
and Wound
of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story.
They can be reached at: christison@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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