There is an article of faith among many Weiss fans that the Jewish neo-cons who got us into this obscene war did so mainly or mostly because they thought it would be in Israel's interests or were loyal to Israel.
There is much that is despicable about Feith, Wurmser, Perle, Wolfowitz and other neo-cons who helped to plan, justify and promote the war, but if you people are going to say they were motivated by loyalty to Israel, you need more than the circumstantal evidence that Walt-Mearsheimer, Blankfort, and others have used to try to "prove this."
The people who promote this theory are doing the same thing Feith, Wurmser and their rump intelligence agencies did to promote the war: they are cherry-picking evidence to suit a pre-determined conclusion.
There is an interesting article in the current issue of Reform Judaism magazine by Dan Fleshler, who opposed the war. It's call "Conspiracy? Was defending Israel the motivating factor behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq?"
He doesn't defend the neocons. But here are some excerpts on their connections to Israel and their motivations, starting with a part in which he agrees with some of what Walt-Measrsheimer et. al are saying:.
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The Mearsheimer/Walt paper reinforces and provides new credibility to ideas popularized by a host of fringe figures--including radical libertarian Jason Raimondo, leftist ideologue Jeffrey Blankfort, and ex-CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison--who have long claimed that Jewish fifth columnists have conspired to hijack American foreign policy in the service of Israel.
This shared conspiracy theory--which is promoted on literally thousands of websites--is based in part on the fact that some officials in the Bush Administration who advocated for and helped to plan the Iraq war have ties to Israel, Likud, or pro-Likud think tanks.
In an article published a few months before the invasion, and later cited by Walt and Mearsheimer, the Christisons write that the list of these pro-Israel officials "reads like the old biblical 'begats.' Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz leads the pack. He was a protoge of Richard Perle, who heads the prominent Pentagon advisory body the Defense Policy Board....
"Another Perle protoge is Douglas Feith, who is currently undersecretary of defense for policy, the department's number-three man, and has worked closely with Perle...in co-authoring strategy papers for right-wing Israeli governments....
"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."
That list is in many ways accurate.
Wolfowitz was, in fact, put in charge of planning the war by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mearsheimer and Walt correctly point out that he is "pro-Israel," citing quotes about his commitment to the Jewish state from the Forward and Jerusalem Post and a reward he received from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
For his part, Douglas Feith established two independent offices within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism and Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans, which found and then publicized questionable--to put it gently--intelligence data that linked Saddam to al-Qaeda and made the case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Mearsheimer and Walt observe correctly that Feith has written articles supporting the Israeli settlement movement.
Another important--and true--component of this theory is that prominent and influential neoconservatives (including Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle) advocated toppling Saddam Hussein long before President Bush decided to invade Iraq.
Conspiracy theorists claim to have what Blankfort calls "a smoking gun," a document that supposedly proves the connection between Israel's interests, Israel's supporters in the Administration, and the Iraq war--the 1996 essay entitled "A Clean Break: Securing the Realm."
Virtually all the websites that mention this paper assert that it was written for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu by Feith, Perle, and David Wurmser, who later worked closely with Feith as a Middle East advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. (Feith says that while the paper was the product of separate phone conversations that Wurmser had with him, Perle, and half a dozen other people, Wurmser was its sole author.) Mearsheimer and Walt describe the essay as follows: "Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu 'focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.' It also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East."
Those who accuse the neocons of dragging the U.S. into war for Israel's sake portray "A Clean Break" as a ready-made blueprint for regime change in Iraq.
In A Pretext for War, investigative reporter James Bamford calls the essay a "plan" for the war. According to this theory, with all of the Saddam-obsessed, pro-Israel neocons in high places, the stage was set for a long-dreamed-of war to oust the Iraqi dictator. The 9/11 attacks gave them the chance they had been waiting for and, Bamford writes, "they dusted off their preemptive war strategy and began putting it to use....The fact that several of the key players most aggressively pushing the war had originally outlined it for the benefit of another country raises the most troubling conflict of interest questions."
Is "A Clean Break" the smoking gun that proves the claims of the conspiracy theorists? Not really. Take a close look at it, as I did.
First, the document--published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a think tank with offices in Jerusalem and Washington--calls for Israel to reduce its dependence on the U.S. and urges Netanyahu to adapt a "new strategy...stressing that Israel is self reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it...and can manage its own affairs." If the people behind this paper wanted the U.S. to fight Israel's wars, that would be an odd recommendation to make.
Second, the paper points to heavily armed Syria, not Iraq, as the principal threat to Israel. Mearsheimer and Walt wrenched the aforementioned quote about toppling Saddam Hussein out of its regional context. Here is the full quote:
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right--as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which [Syrian President] Assad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite kingdom [of Jordan]."
A number of steps are recommended to help Jordan win this power struggle with Syria, including making Jordan the destination for Netanyahu's first official state visit. Regime change in Iraq does come up one more time, very briefly, in this context. But to call the document a "plan" for regime change that the U.S. eventually adapted is a gross mischaracterization.
The document also calls for a rejection of the Oslo peace process and a forceful response to Palestinian terror, and recommends some limited military actions against Syria, including "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon and, should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper." It does not, however, call for a full-scale war with any country.
That said, "A Clean Break" (and a longer paper which Wurmser wrote later that elaborated on these ideas) does advocate a change in the balance of power in the region through the use of military force that would, in the process, further Israel's interests. However, these ideas should in no way be surprising to anyone familiar with neocon thinking: they believed the U.S. and other democratic states should apply these principles not only to some Arab nations, but also to other governments they didn't like in the Balkans, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. It is hardly surprising that a few of them recommended the same philosophy to Netanyahu....
...The question remains: did Jewish officials in the Bush Administration who made the case for the war do so because they put Israel's interests ahead of America's?
I found no evidence whatsoever that these officials were motivated mainly by concern for Israel. The most one can say is that perhaps a commitment to Israel gave these officials added impetus to do what they wrongly believed to be in America's best interests.
Consider the perspective of Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired army colonel who worked on the Near East and South Asia desk at the Pentagon from 2002 to 2003, and a fierce critic of both the Iraq war and the political appointments of "pro-Israel, anti-Arab" neocons to Pentagon positions. If she believed that some of her former Pentagon colleagues promoted the invasion of Iraq because of their loyalty to Israel, she would have told me so. Instead, she called that characterization "simplistic."
"I believe the get-tough and preemptive-war push is part of neoconservatism, but not particular to those neoconservatives like Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, who also happen to be Jewish," Kwiatkowski said. "These folks...made their political bones as anti-communists. The so-called Islamists are seen by neoconservatives as the new communism.... Neoconservatives wish to see an 'End of Evil' in a big, loud, decisive bang. We see a kind of predisposition for violent confrontation that isn't as much based on loyalty to Israel, but on something much closer to home."
----
In my view, the neoconservatives with this predisposition who helped lead us into Iraq have shattered America's international credibility and made the world a much more dangerous place. They have many things to answer for. But sending American troops into the Middle East to fight and die for Israel is not one of them.
There is an article of faith among many Weiss fans that the Jewish neo-cons who got us into this obscene war did so mainly or mostly because they thought it would be in Israel's interests or were loyal to Israel.
There is much that is despicable about Feith, Wurmser, Perle, Wolfowitz and other neo-cons who helped to plan, justify and promote the war, but if you people are going to say they were motivated by loyalty to Israel, you need more than the circumstantal evidence that Walt-Mearsheimer, Blankfort, and others have used to try to "prove this."
The people who promote this theory are doing the same thing Feith, Wurmser and their rump intelligence agencies did to promote the war: they are cherry-picking evidence to suit a pre-determined conclusion.
There is an interesting article in the current issue of Reform Judaism magazine by Dan Fleshler, who opposed the war. It's call "Conspiracy? Was defending Israel the motivating factor behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq?"
He doesn't defend the neocons. But here are some excerpts on their connections to Israel and their motivations, starting with a part in which he agrees with some of what Walt-Measrsheimer et. al are saying:.
--
The Mearsheimer/Walt paper reinforces and provides new credibility to ideas popularized by a host of fringe figures--including radical libertarian Jason Raimondo, leftist ideologue Jeffrey Blankfort, and ex-CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison--who have long claimed that Jewish fifth columnists have conspired to hijack American foreign policy in the service of Israel.
This shared conspiracy theory--which is promoted on literally thousands of websites--is based in part on the fact that some officials in the Bush Administration who advocated for and helped to plan the Iraq war have ties to Israel, Likud, or pro-Likud think tanks.
In an article published a few months before the invasion, and later cited by Walt and Mearsheimer, the Christisons write that the list of these pro-Israel officials "reads like the old biblical 'begats.' Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz leads the pack. He was a protoge of Richard Perle, who heads the prominent Pentagon advisory body the Defense Policy Board....
"Another Perle protoge is Douglas Feith, who is currently undersecretary of defense for policy, the department's number-three man, and has worked closely with Perle...in co-authoring strategy papers for right-wing Israeli governments....
"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."
That list is in many ways accurate.
Wolfowitz was, in fact, put in charge of planning the war by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mearsheimer and Walt correctly point out that he is "pro-Israel," citing quotes about his commitment to the Jewish state from the Forward and Jerusalem Post and a reward he received from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
For his part, Douglas Feith established two independent offices within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism and Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans, which found and then publicized questionable--to put it gently--intelligence data that linked Saddam to al-Qaeda and made the case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Mearsheimer and Walt observe correctly that Feith has written articles supporting the Israeli settlement movement.
Another important--and true--component of this theory is that prominent and influential neoconservatives (including Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle) advocated toppling Saddam Hussein long before President Bush decided to invade Iraq.
Conspiracy theorists claim to have what Blankfort calls "a smoking gun," a document that supposedly proves the connection between Israel's interests, Israel's supporters in the Administration, and the Iraq war--the 1996 essay entitled "A Clean Break: Securing the Realm."
Virtually all the websites that mention this paper assert that it was written for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu by Feith, Perle, and David Wurmser, who later worked closely with Feith as a Middle East advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. (Feith says that while the paper was the product of separate phone conversations that Wurmser had with him, Perle, and half a dozen other people, Wurmser was its sole author.) Mearsheimer and Walt describe the essay as follows: "Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu 'focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.' It also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East."
Those who accuse the neocons of dragging the U.S. into war for Israel's sake portray "A Clean Break" as a ready-made blueprint for regime change in Iraq.
In A Pretext for War, investigative reporter James Bamford calls the essay a "plan" for the war. According to this theory, with all of the Saddam-obsessed, pro-Israel neocons in high places, the stage was set for a long-dreamed-of war to oust the Iraqi dictator. The 9/11 attacks gave them the chance they had been waiting for and, Bamford writes, "they dusted off their preemptive war strategy and began putting it to use....The fact that several of the key players most aggressively pushing the war had originally outlined it for the benefit of another country raises the most troubling conflict of interest questions."
Is "A Clean Break" the smoking gun that proves the claims of the conspiracy theorists? Not really. Take a close look at it, as I did.
First, the document--published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a think tank with offices in Jerusalem and Washington--calls for Israel to reduce its dependence on the U.S. and urges Netanyahu to adapt a "new strategy...stressing that Israel is self reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it...and can manage its own affairs." If the people behind this paper wanted the U.S. to fight Israel's wars, that would be an odd recommendation to make.
Second, the paper points to heavily armed Syria, not Iraq, as the principal threat to Israel. Mearsheimer and Walt wrenched the aforementioned quote about toppling Saddam Hussein out of its regional context. Here is the full quote:
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right--as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which [Syrian President] Assad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite kingdom [of Jordan]."
A number of steps are recommended to help Jordan win this power struggle with Syria, including making Jordan the destination for Netanyahu's first official state visit. Regime change in Iraq does come up one more time, very briefly, in this context. But to call the document a "plan" for regime change that the U.S. eventually adapted is a gross mischaracterization.
The document also calls for a rejection of the Oslo peace process and a forceful response to Palestinian terror, and recommends some limited military actions against Syria, including "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon and, should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper." It does not, however, call for a full-scale war with any country.
That said, "A Clean Break" (and a longer paper which Wurmser wrote later that elaborated on these ideas) does advocate a change in the balance of power in the region through the use of military force that would, in the process, further Israel's interests. However, these ideas should in no way be surprising to anyone familiar with neocon thinking: they believed the U.S. and other democratic states should apply these principles not only to some Arab nations, but also to other governments they didn't like in the Balkans, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. It is hardly surprising that a few of them recommended the same philosophy to Netanyahu....
...The question remains: did Jewish officials in the Bush Administration who made the case for the war do so because they put Israel's interests ahead of America's?
I found no evidence whatsoever that these officials were motivated mainly by concern for Israel. The most one can say is that perhaps a commitment to Israel gave these officials added impetus to do what they wrongly believed to be in America's best interests.
Consider the perspective of Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired army colonel who worked on the Near East and South Asia desk at the Pentagon from 2002 to 2003, and a fierce critic of both the Iraq war and the political appointments of "pro-Israel, anti-Arab" neocons to Pentagon positions. If she believed that some of her former Pentagon colleagues promoted the invasion of Iraq because of their loyalty to Israel, she would have told me so. Instead, she called that characterization "simplistic."
"I believe the get-tough and preemptive-war push is part of neoconservatism, but not particular to those neoconservatives like Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, who also happen to be Jewish," Kwiatkowski said. "These folks...made their political bones as anti-communists. The so-called Islamists are seen by neoconservatives as the new communism.... Neoconservatives wish to see an 'End of Evil' in a big, loud, decisive bang. We see a kind of predisposition for violent confrontation that isn't as much based on loyalty to Israel, but on something much closer to home."
----
In my view, the neoconservatives with this predisposition who helped lead us into Iraq have shattered America's international credibility and made the world a much more dangerous place. They have many things to answer for. But sending American troops into the Middle East to fight and die for Israel is not one of them.