Why Jews Are Not Leading an Antiwar Movement This Time Round
Historically, [Jews] have funded the Left... They were the major funders of the Civil Rights Movement. They were the funders of the anti-war movement during the Viet Nam War. If people were arrested, and they needed bail, progressive Jews provided the bail, and the lawyers were mostly Jewish... Going back into the thirties, you have Jews active in the unions, active in every radical movement. That's the tradition I grew up in. It no longer exists. As a matter of fact, it's been erased from Jewish history. Young Jews growing up in America today have no idea of the Jewish radical past in this country.
Blankfort points to the same problem I have pointed to, the Israel lobby, which saw crushing Iraq as in Israel's interest. But I'd like to throw in another factor: class. Since Vietnam, Jews have risen dramatically in American society. My people are now implicated in the power structure in ways we never imagined in the '60s. Back then Jews who joined the antiwar movement thought of themselves as outsiders in American life. Most of the white Columbia U. radicals, for instance Mark Rudd, the late Ted Gold, the imprisoned David Gilbert, Bob Feldman—were Jewish kids from middle class backgrounds who felt alienated from a warmaking establishment.
Rudd, born Rudnitsky (his dad changed the name to advance in the military), writes in an essay on the Jewishness of the radicals:What outraged me and my comrades so much about Columbia, along with its hypocrisy, was the air of genteel civility. Or should I say gentile? Despite the presence of so many Jews in the faculty and among the students.. the place was dripping with goyishness... We were peasant children right out of the shtetls of New Jersey and Queens screaming, "You want to know the truth about Columbia University, they're a bunch of liberal imperialists! " Morally and emotionally we could not fit into the civilized world of the racist, defense-oriented modern university. Such was our ordeal of civility.
Today's Jewish world is not the shtetl. We have assimilated, we are the American success story. Morally and emotionally, Jewish kids tend to identify with blue-state powers-that-be. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions that prove the rule: as a body we have little class interest in challenging the assumptions of the (corrupt!) ruling class that got us into this disastrous war.
haha, this Mark Rudd is great:
As a kid in Maplewood I never heard of tikkun olam, the now well-known commandment to repair the world. For all I know, Michael Lerner
I liked this comment of his:
Israel is America?s future: militarized, racist, religio-nationalist, corporate, riven with so many internal splits and hatreds that only the existence of a perpetual enemy keeps the nation from exploding.
Of course it's not only the Jews of Israel who need a perpetual enemy.
Just FYI, the MidHudson Progressive Alliance of Beacon is sending a bus to the Washington Justice for Peace March on Jan 27 2006.
At least 20 % of the members plus their leader are Jews.
The Beacon scenario is so assimilated that nobody pays attention to the Jews or Israel.
Wow, me and my people- my mother in law and my wife really got down last night.
I did the mother-in-law until she bled out her ass. The wife was really into it.
I'll be getting back to little Deb Gardner's skull later. I wish I could have offed her myself, instead I had to dig up her corpse to play with.
I'm glad that I can really "open up" to my readers- you're good people.
PW
Apparently, Philip Weiss seems himself as some of a sage of the Jewish left. Yet his comments reveal a breathtaking ignorance about the actual views of the great majority of Jewish progressives. Phil, wake up and smell the coffee. The reason most left-wing Jews have kept their distance from "the anti-war mvt" is not because of the influence of the "Israel lobby." Instead it is because most Jews on the left are sensible enough to avoid a close association with a movement that typically blames Israel and Jewish neocons for most of the problems in the world today. One need not be a right-winger to have simply noticed all this. The fact is that of the two main umbrella organizations that have organized almost all of the large anti-war protests -one is led by a lunatic fringe group that supported Saddam Hussein's "anti-imperialist" leadership and makes the demonization of "Zionists" and Israel a cornerstone of their ideology. And the milder of the two coalitions(UFPJ) identifies with "the resistance in Iraq" and cannot even bring itself two support a two -state solution in the Middle East!
The fact that most Jewish leftists have not been deeply involved in this sort of bullshit speaks well of us. We have nothing to be ashamed of at all. And it should also be noted that our disgust with these developments on the left has NOT led us to support the war. It does mean we have an appreciation for nuances and complexities as opposed to just swallowing dogma.
Two last points: has Weiss bothered to even notice that a number of moderate formations on the Left - such as the extremely influential Moveon.org- does have a number of Jews in its leadership?!
And lastly, for Weiss to point to Jeffrey Blankfort as some sort of insightful... anything, reveals his own ignorance. Blankfort and his pal Alexander Cockburn are widely seen on the left as two of the most mean spirited, sectarian dogmatists around.
Dear Phil. Please find yourself another "beat" to report on. Or ..if you insist on continuing to write about these matters, please have the decency, honesty, and accuracy to call "your" left what it is -the sectarian far left.
That Jews are not as active in this wacko wing of the left as they were in the movements of the sixties says many GOOD, things about Jewish progressives. ...despite what you, Blanfort,and Cockburn may believe.
"Blankfort and his pal Alexander Cockburn ... "
I like the way he puts that. It reminds me of Catch 22 :
"We got your pal, buddy, we got your pal."
Right on, Ken. You've articulated a different aspect of the problem "Tough Dove" has been talking about on this blog for the last few days. But he and Philip Weiss appear to have calmed down a bit and there is a possibility (maybe a slim one) that a constructive conversation will take place. (See "I'm Too Harsh on my Own People" and the responses). So stop being angry and tell us if you think there is any way to fix the problem you've identified. We've got to stop this obscene War instead of screeching at other! That's all Cockburn and Blankfort know how to do.
Ken Brociner: "American leftist Jews didn't support the movement to end America's war in Iraq because it would not be in Israel's interest." [paraphrased]
I am not sure if it makes a huge difference whether there are a lot of Jewish individuals leading the recent anti-War movement.
If one goes back to the Vietnam era, the anti-War movement wasn't very effective considering how much energy was put into it. That war lasted a very long time, and there was repeated escalation into both Cambodia and Laos. At the time there was even more American deaths and they showed the returning bodies on television and there wasn't "embedded" reporters. My experience with the recent anti-War movement (and from my studies of the Vietnam-era movement) is that they are completely ineffective at stopping or prematurely ending wars. These movements though are fun for the participants, including lots of excuses for getting laid. Wars are managed by the political elite who are mostly insulated from such "proletariat" movements. The end to the Vietnam era war occurred because of broadly unhappy voting publics and disillusioned elites, although even with Vietnam it took a while if one remembers Nixon's false promises.
I am of the strong opinion that student and dissident led anti-War movements pretty much useless. Change happens via access to the political elites and via creating structures (think tanks, media watch dogs, fund books, etc.) which reinforce such efforts. And thus I do agree with Philip that smart funding is important to success, but funding of elite-directed efforts, no so much mass public directed efforts (although political television ads and editorials are useful) and especially not simplistic anti-war protest movements.
A jew who claims to be assimilated into normal mankind and uses phrases such as "my people" when
refering to jews is simply lying to himself. Judaism is racist in its seminal idea, that jews are the "choosen people" of god. The tribal and knee jerk reaction of american jews to support the racist regime of Israel underlines the reason they aren't supporting an antiwar movement. They support "der goyim" waging war against islam in the Mid East. Bob K
Part of the broad "Left" has traditionally been the churches. Back in 2002 when the war drums were beating, all the major organized religions of the world took very public stances against the onrushing war. Pope John Paul was probably the most vocal, but all the mainstream churches joined him -- the Anglicans, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Lutherans, etc. etc. All except two: Judaism (all main branches) and the Southern Baptists were alone in backing the neocon project.
This is particularly interesting when you consider the liberal tradition of, for example, the Union for Reform Judaism. Representing the largest bloc of American Jews, Reform brags on its site of its "long history of opposition to war," and how it was "the first religious organization to oppose the War in Vietnam."
But when it came to an unprovoked preemptive war on a third-world country by the planet's only superpower, this time they chose to remain silent.
I think Ken showed why Jared Kushner should strip little ignorant Phil of his blog and hand it over to sensible Ken.
David writes that all major religions were against the invasion of Iraq in 2002 "except two --Judaism and the Southern Baptists" which were "alone in backing" the neo cons' war Then he notes that even the Reform Movement was silent...
I am a Reform Jews and I wanted the Union of Reform Judaism to protest the invasion and pass a resolution against it in 2002. There was a furious fight within our movement. My side lost. I was very angry that, in the end, no such resolution was adapted.
Instead, as described below, there was a statement approved by the leaders of the movement that was, essentially identical to the position of centrist Democrats in Congress.
Like Hillary Clinton and Kerry and many Dems, our movement should have spoken out against the invasion before it happend. But, like them, the movement did not exactly "back" the neo cons war.
More importantly, the position taken and conversations that led up to it had little to do with the threats Saddam posed to Israel. Sure, Israel's plight came up, but we discussed the issue of Iraq like all other American citizens in that harrowing, confusing time. On this blog, there is somehow the assumption that loyalty to Israel caused Jews to be silent. That is just ridiculous, at least among the liberal (but too passive) Jews I know.
Like other Americans, as the lies and the deceit and bad planning became clear, the vast majority of Jews turned against the war. The URJ has since passed a number of resolutiouns against it.
Here is an exerpt from the Resolution on Iraq adapted by the Union of Reform Judaism in 2005. It describes what Reform leaders were thinking about before they adopted what turned out to be a mistaken, tragically mistaken position. But if you read through it, I defy you to find evidence of "dual loyalty" or of a particular concern for Israel as the expense of concern for America.
We made mistakes for the same reasons other Americans made mistakes:
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ON THE WAR IN IRAQ
Submitted by the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, Congregation Shir Hadash of Los Gatos, California, Congregation Tikkun V?or of Ithaca, New York, Temple Beth Or of Everett, Washington, Temple Emanuel of Worcester, Massachusetts, Temple Sinai of Brookline, Massachusetts, and Temple Sinai of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the 68th Union for Reform Judaism General Assembly
BACKGROUND
The war in Iraq is clearly one of the most challenging moral issues facing America.
It is true that a brutal dictator has been removed and is now being tried by a national tribunal for mass murder. In removing Saddam Hussein, there has been movement toward democracy and toward freedom of press and speech that was unimaginable just a few years ago. A long-time destabilizing regional force has been eliminated.
However, more than 2,000 U.S. service members have lost their lives, over 14,000 others have been wounded, and scores of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and wounded. Violence in Iraq continues, with new casualties virtually every day.
Resentment against the United States is breeding a new generation of insurgents and terrorists. Iraq is in danger of splitting into regional cantons that would provide an additional source of destabilization...
...Three years ago, the leaders of the Union for Reform Judaism addressed the prospects of war in Iraq.
In September 2002, the Executive Committee of the Union?s Board of Trustees discussed, at length, the morality and efficacy of the use of force.
It examined the insights from Jewish moral rules regarding war and related issues, insights that remain relevant today, including: the obligation to defend innocents derived from the duty to rescue (Lev. 19:16:?Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor;? BT Sanhedrin 74a, Baba Kama 28a, Shulchan Aruch Hoshen Mishpat 425:1); the justifications for preemptive wars (BT, Sotah 44b, Eruvin 45a) and how it applies to a situation where non-conventional weapons were widely suspected; the need to pursue vigorously peaceful options before the use of force could be justified (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Melachim 6:1); the need to protect civilians (MT Melachim 6:7); and the need, derived from the rules of bal taschit (do not waste), to provide for the protection of environmental and economic infrastructures that would allow civilian life to resume as soon as possible after warfare (Deut. 20:19-20; Ibn Ezra commentary on Deut. 20:19; MT Melachim 6:10).
A variety of other insights from the Jewish tradition are also relevant, from the protections of captives (See, e.g. Deut. 21:10-14), to the obligation of the judges and leaders of the community to be forthright people who would neither lie nor mislead (Deuteronomy 16:18-20).
These discussions of Jewish tradition and U.S. policy options led to the adoption of the position on "Unilateral Action by the U.S. Against Iraq" that supported military action by the U.S. --even unilateral action if necessary--only in the context of four propositions:
1) International cooperation is far, far better than unilateral action, and the U.S. must explore all reasonable means of attaining such support;
2)Non-military action is always preferable to military action, and the U.S. must fully explore all options to resolve the situation through such means;
3)If the effort to obtain international cooperation and support through the United Nations fails, the U.S. must work with other nations to obtain cooperation in any military action; and
4)The President should not act without Congressional approval of the use of force, including any unilateral military action taken by the U.S.
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I am still furious, folks, thinking about that position. But don't tell me it was taken with considerations that were any different tnan those of other Americans.
One more time, Salvage, in case you didn't get it:
EVERY MAJOR RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION ON THE PLANET OPPOSED THE WAR. Except two.
That is not consistent with the argument that "we were no different from everyone else."
How can anyone believe that Joe Lieberman is wrong about the Iraq war. He is a religious man, with the highest of morals and integrity. Iraq has always been an enemy of Israel, a true threat to their egsistance. Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Scooter Libby, Joe Lieberman and many other chosen people, are doing, and have done, Gods work here on earth. If they must lie about WMDs, so be it. If they have to connect Iraq with al-Qaida, let it be done. To be true or false with the goyim - what difference does it make! The goal
David I think Salvage's only point was that, for the Reform Jews the decision not to oppose the war on Iraq was not a matter of dual loyalty. He did say "Sure, Israel's plight came up" and he didn't elaborate. He probably should have, because of course no official statement from the Union of Reform Judaism is going to refer to that issue. But we all know that Sadam lobbed a few missiles at Israel during the Gulf War, and we all know that everybody was deceived in 2002-2003 and believed Iraq might still have had WMDs.
I'm not very interested in what Israelis today would have to say about how it wasn't in their interests to have a totally destablized Iraq such as we see now, but back then, it was widely believed that Iraq still had WMDs. And that is a different matter, for Israel than is what we see now in Iraq.
Liberal Reform Jews aside, assuming even they had no dual loyalty (and Salvage's report is not sufficiently complete to convince me) Reform Jews are not the neocons of American Jewry, and it is neocons who many here suspect of promoting the war on Iraq. The Jewish neocons probably did have Israel's interests in mind, and the non-Jewish neocons - heaven only knows what they were thinking. New world order and all that crap, I guess.
"Judaism and Jewishness are different categories. While Judaism is an unchanged religious core, Jewishness is a dynamic category in a continuous flux. Indeed, this is the case of Zionism. Zionism is Jewish, it is a dynamic continuation of Jewishness: it is racist, exclusive, supremacist and self centred, yet it is not Judaic. It has very little to do with Judaism. It may be messianic in a territorial sense yet it lacks the Judaic divinity. In fact, Zionism opposes Judaism."
Lapidary, wouldn't you say.
It's the concluding paragraph of Gilad Atmon's big piece, "One Hundred Years of Jewish Solitude". Atmon, for the record, is an Israeli. Israeli-born, served in the Israeli army, the whole package.
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."
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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.
This is only proves that Jewish "progressives" and their moral and intellectual acrobatics have indeed been, and still are, the Eretz Israel crowd's useful idiots.
Maybe "Salvage the good" thinks or hopes Americans are stupid. He and his "progressives" would rather take this chance than actually oppose the revisionists and the Likudniks and AIPAC.
Yes, they will always insist Iraq, and especially Iran now, have nothing to do with Israel (god forbid!) to those who beat the drums of war.
Whatever. Let the "progressives" lose all credibility. For all their nice sound bites, without them and their shielding of Israel from any criticism, the Eretz Israel crowd could never have been as successful as they have been.
The neo-cons neither.
Congratulations.
"In today
Amused and Must Read,
I know I'm chipping away at your cherished beliefs here, and it's probably fruitless, but I think those beliefs are a major diversion from efforts to stop the war (and prevent the next war).
I told you I opposed the war. I am not providing the neocons with a "fig leaf." There are a dozen reasons to criticize them. But I have yet to see enough evidence to convince me that this was primarily a "War for Israel." Of course Israel and its interests were a factor, but it seems to me that claims that Israel and the Jewish lobby were the main reason we went to war are based mostly on a determined, oddly frenzied effort to grasp at a few pieces of evidence and base a case on them. You apparently need to believe this. Please ask yourself why...
Richard Clarke was another harsh critic of the war who was on the scene in the first Bush Administration. In his book, he says Israel was one of about six or seven factors that entered into the Administration's calculations; he doesn't give it more weight than, say, the need for oil or a desire to give American troops an alternative base to Saudi Arabia. Or a desire by Cheney and Rumsfeld to "send a message" to the world that the U.S. would have no inhibitions about using military force after 9/11.
Sure, the neo cons' ideological fantasies about a New Middle East were percolating in the Administration and they added some fuel to the fire. And sure, Sharon and his Israelis welcomed the war.
But have you read all the books that have been published recently by reporters who did extensive interviews with officials both inside and just outside the inner sancta of the first Bush dministration? I have. In "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks or "Cobra II" by Gordon and Trainor, Israel and its interests barely come up as fators in the decisionmaking process. Are those reporters and all of the former officals they spoke to (many of them furious with the Bushies) just "suppressing" the truth and providing a fig leaf?
The only Administration insider Mearshemer and Walt quote from is Phillip Zellikow, a State Dept. official, who said in a pre-war speech that Saddam's WMDs mainly threatened Israel But Zellikow has since written that he had no special knowledge of the Administration's motives and he was not commenting on them in his speech.
Again, this crackpot theory is a diversion. And it's just wrong.
Salvage, to your list of "fringe figures" engaged in "crackpot conspiracy theories", don't forget to add Colin Powell, and the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and General Anthony Zinni, and all those Senators and Congressman who have spoken out against the lobby, and public figures like Brent Scowcroft and James Baker and Zbigniew Brzezinski and Ralph Nader and Bobby Ray Inman and Wesley Clark and many others.
I don't believe truth can be determined by a consensus vote, but since all of these people had to brave a pretty ferocious lobby in order to speak their minds (and in every case were branded "anti-Semites" for their trouble), I think they deserve some recognition.
But, but, but there is NO Lobby that works for Israel's interests, are you guys dillusional?
5/24/2005 12:11:00 PM
WASHINGTON, May 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at their 2005 Policy Conference last night. Pelosi discussed the relationship between the United States and Israel and the continued effort for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Below are her remarks:
"Thank you, Amy Friedkin, my dear friend for so many years. Californians, North and South, are proud of your great leadership at AIPAC. And to Bernice Manocherian, President of AIPAC, thank you. All who care about peace in the Middle East are grateful for your strength and wisdom in guiding AIPAC. As a native of Baltimore, I take special pride of your incoming President, Howard Friedman, who will continue in the tradition of outstanding leadership at AIPAC.
"I also want to acknowledge all of the students who are here. It is great to see so many young people taking such an interest in public affairs, especially on one of the critical issues of our time: peace in the Middle East. This spring, I was in Israel as part of a congressional trip that also took us to Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. One of the most powerful experiences was taking a helicopter toward Gaza, over the path of the security fence. We set down in a field that belonged to a local kibbutz. It was a cool but sunny day, and the field was starting to bloom with mustard. Mustard is a crop that grows in California, and it felt at that moment as if I were home.
"And then we were told that the reason we had to land in that field, as opposed to our actual destination, was because there had been an infiltration that morning, and they weren't sure how secure the area was. And that point alone brought us back to the daily reality of Israel: even moments of peace and beauty are haunted by the specter of violence.
"While in Israel, we met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Vice Premier Shimon Perez. From them and from other leaders, we heard something I had not heard in a long time: cautious optimism. This was an attitude quite different from the one that confronted us when I spoke to AIPAC two years ago.
"One thing, however is unchanged: America's commitment to the safety and security of the State of Israel is unwavering. America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship.
Watch Bibi Netanyahu do his magic and work the crowd into a frenzy in his famous "It Is 1938 and Iran is Nazi Germany" speech to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly (video) in Los Angeles last October:
www.jerusalemonline.com/ujc.asp
See also:
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html
Are those reporters and all of the former officals they spoke to (many of them furious with the Bushies) just "suppressing" the truth and providing a fig leaf?
-- yes.
Salvage the Good, (fabulous nick-name, Dude!) here's what you wrote:
"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.
"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."
I don't know that it is, in fact, an article of faith. Certainly it isn't for me. Who knows what ultimate powers the neocons were working for -- I wouldn't presume to put that in writing.
However -- this is the important point as far as I'm concerned, and I think it should be an important point for prudent American Jews of whatever political persuasion -- there is an appearance, a perception of this. There is some suggestion of a smoking gun. We are bogged down in a disastrous war with the prospect of more war to come. Scapegoats will certainly be found.
If I were a young and energetic and a Jew -- I am none of those things, alas --I would concentrate not on finding/proving ultimate truth, instead I would do whatever I could think of to counteract the influence and the tactics of the AIPAC/Israelis. I think it's time for American Jews to speak out very clearly, strongly and persistently, without equivocation. What have you got to lose?
That is the important question I think. My answer to your answer would be another question: how much longer are you going to live here in America, in the land of the free and the home of the brave -- which you yourself helped to create -- how much longer will you allow Adolph Hitler to control your life?
I apologize if the clumsily-written last sentence in my post offended anyone. What I tried to ask -- and didn't quite -- is: "What is the point of living in 21st Century America if your life is consumed with worry over something that happened in Europe 60 years ago, something that America gave blood and treasure to put an end to?"
brenda,
The answer to your question is a sad one. It's because to a certain kind of Jew that is supposedly the justification for anything Israel does and the Holocaust and some abstract image of Israel is for them the only Jewish identity they can think of. It's the breakdown of jewish culture and jewish content. I'm jewish and I still can't understand it. The Holocaust is important, but how that translates into kissing the butts of christianoids, demonizing Muslims, and supporting criminals like Bush and Cheney? -- well, it doesn't.
The Talmudist Jacob Neusner has written about this new religion of holocaust and redemption. He suggests that its basic dynamics are dervived from Christianity, not from classical Judaism, IIRC.
Rowan,
That's interesting. Where can I find that writing?