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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE
ISRAEL LOBBY
Former top
CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers
the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful
it is. Read
how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated
by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton
to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing
of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send
full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security
Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a
true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier,
exclusive to CounterPunch newsletter subscribers, is a MUST read. CounterPunch
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Will Congress or the UN Stand Up to the
Great Decider?
Who
Will Question the Drive to Attack Iran?
By BRIAN J. FOLEY
Thought exercise: You're "The Decider."
Someone asks you whether the U.S. should attack Iran, to prevent
that country from building an atomic bomb. How would you decide?
You'd probably ask some questions:
war is serious business. You might make proponents of war meet
a substantial burden of proof that Iran has a weapons program;
that the program is headed toward a bomb; and that Iran would
actually use the bomb--that, in short, Iran poses a serious threat.
You might demand estimates of the likely costs and how to keep
them as low as possible, and weigh these costs against other
uses for the money, lives, materiel and energy needed for war.
If you asked these questions,
you'd be far ahead of the real "Deciders," the U.N.
Security Council and the U.S. Congress. Although both bodies
are charged under international and U.S. law respectively with
deciding whether war is an appropriate way to address Iran's
alleged efforts to develop a nuclear bomb, neither body is required
to ask these sorts of questions. Both failed to ask them before
the 2003 invasion of Iraq (which the U.N. did not authorize,
but has not condemned), and the result was a war that most of
the world now regards as unnecessary, a war based on misinformation
that could have been revealed as such before the bombs were ever
dropped. Indeed, two years ago, two major newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post issued limited mea culpas for failing to ask
hardnosed questions. But Congress has not issued any apologies
for failing to deliberate, for surrendering its constitutional
power to decide whether to go to war to the president several
months before this wasteful, counterproductive war was launched.
Congress appears equally unlikely
to ask tough-minded questions this time, despite the fact that
the President has essentially threatened a first-strike
with nuclear weapons against Iran. Nor does the U.N. Security
Council appear ready to probe the Administration's case with
any rigor.
It's a pity. War should no
longer be treated as a sport of kings, an ad hoc decision more
about whether countries will join coalitions than about evidence
and a serious search for intelligent alternatives. War is too
deadly, too costly; the risk of escalation, the spread of conflict,
refugee crises, environmental harm, economic damage, and terrorist
blowback against the public is too high. Although the existing
"law of war" (that is, the law that purportedly takes
effect once war starts) might seek to protect against many such
harms, those laws are too little, too late: many damages are
foreordained once war begins. It's time for Congress and the
U.N. to create processes to ensure that the searching questions
are asked before any bombs are dropped.
This lack of process is rarely
discussed by politicians or jurists. It was, however, raised
recently, albeit obliquely, by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
in his proposals for U.N. reform. In his 2005 report, In Larger
Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All,
the Secretary-General urged the Security Council to adopt a resolution
where the Council could "come to a common view on how to
weigh the seriousness of the threat; the proper purpose of the
proposed military action; whether means short of the use of force
might plausibly succeed in stopping the threat; whether the military
option is proportional to the threat at hand; and whether there
is a reasonable chance of success." ( In Larger Freedom,
Ch. 3, "Freedom
From Fear," para. 126) So far, however, no such resolution
has been adopted.
In addition to the points the
Secretary-General raised, decisionmakers should be required to
identify specifically the harms that would likely result from
military action, and seek ways to limit them. For example, decisionmakers
should be required to investigate the likely military and civilian
casualties; refugee crises; the danger that the targeted country
(or forces allied with it) might retaliate; the possibility that
the conflict might spill over the target nation's borders; likely
environmental harm and likely economic impacts, especially on
energy markets.
Congress, too, should step
up. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war,
and the power of the purse. With the Bush policy of preemptive
war--a war we initiate when we're not directly under attack--Congress
has the duty to ensure that any use of military force is undertaken
with seriousness and responsibility. The White House announced
this policy almost four years ago and recently reaffirmed it
; the time is ripe for Congress to reassert itself by creating
a process to test the need for such wars.
Preventing unnecessary wars
is an important goal of the U.N. Charter and the U.S. Constitution.
Recent history has shown that it's hard to achieve this goal,
however, when the White House is bent on war. The crisis regarding
Iran presents the U.N. and Congress with the opportunity to create
a process to guide the decision of whether to go to war, a process
that helps ensure that any resort to force is truly the last
resort, truly necessary, and that the attendant destruction and
disorder are as limited as possible. Failure to create such
a process is a mistake we cannot afford to repeat.
CounterPunch
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