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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,
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Around five in the evening on September
11, 2001 I was sitting in Greenwich Village's Washington Square
Park in New York City. The air was foul with the smell of the
burning World Trade Center and the park was full of people.
Many of the folks were park regulars, but many more were people
who had escaped that day's death and mayhem not too many blocks
south of the park. I was sitting near a group of men drinking
beer from brown bags and discussing the attacks. By this time,
the general belief was that the perpetrators were Middle Eastern
terrorists and that Bush would now find somebody to go to war
with. As I drifted in and out of the conversation, I heard one
man say that the only way that the US would ever get "those"
people in "those" countries over there to behave was
if they colonized them. You know, he said, just show them how
we do things and make them do them our way. I would have jumped
into the conversation at that point, but my female friend with
me grabbed my hand at that instant and we walked away to talk
with some of her friends.
Since that day, it seems safe
to say that Washington has been doing exactly what that man suggested.
No where is this more true than in Iraq. Despite overwhelming
evidence that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, US troops, CIA
agents, diplomats, and mercenaries have been attempting to show
the Iraqis how we do things and make them do them our way. Although
more and more of us regular citizens are getting fed up with
this exercise, there has been no groundswell of opposition to
this project in the halls of power. Not in Congress, not in
the Pentagon, not in the establishment media, not in the courts,
and definitely not in the Executive Branch. Why is this so?
Simply put, it's because the powers that run this country believe
that it is absolutely necessary for Washington to control that
part of the world. And it doesn't matter to them how many Haditha
massacres there are. Like that gentleman in Washington Square
Park that day, the establishment in the United States does not
question the fact of US hegemony. Nor does it question that
hegemony's rightness or reasonableness. Furthermore, the powers
that run this country are willing to spend whatever it takes
in taxpayers' money and lives to maintain that dominance.
Back in 2004, Noah Feldman,
an NYU professor of law and onetime Senior Constitutional Adviser
to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, published a book
he titled What
We Owe Iraq. Reading it today is somewhat revealing
in that the reader gets an insider's view on the type of thinking
that occurred during the reign of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The book is based on Mr. Feldman's experiences in Iraq in 2003
as part of Paul Bremer's team of "experts." More importantly,
it is based on the assumption that he shared with the rest of
the US ruling elites that Washington not only would be wise to
establish a friendly government in Baghdad, but that it had a
moral duty to do so. Hence, the title What We Owe Iraq.
To his credit, Feldman is not so blinded by his assumptions
that he could not foresee possible pitfalls to the US nation
building enterprise. Perhaps most important among these pitfalls,
he states clearly that elections in Iraq were more likely to
pull Iraq apart than create a Shia majoritarian tyranny.
In an argument that twists
a bit here and turns a bit there, Feldman attempts to answer
the question he himself poses early on in the text: "How
can American nation building in Iraq be morally acceptable if
it is designed to serve U.S. interests?" Of course, the
growing consensus among most of the world's citizens is that
this so-called nation building (or imperialism) is not morally
acceptable. However, Mr. Feldman refuses to give into this consensus
and insists in the afterword to the book that even though the
continuing presence of US troops in Iraq may not head off either
a civil war or contribute to a negotiated settlement of the insurgency,
those troops should remain. Indeed, states Feldman, not only
should they remain, maybe there should be more. After all, he
concludes, "moral amnesia is no route to a clear conscience."
It is that last sentence that
provides the framework for this book. Feldman, like so many
other humanitarian imperialists, seems to honestly believe that
the countries of the world would be better off if they were all
like the United States-corporate capitalist republics. More
dangerously, he also seems to think that the US has a moral imperative
to transform as much of the world's nations into such entities.
Therefore, he assumes a moral stance that uses as its basis
the belief that invasions and occupations of countries that don't
meet such a standard are not only morally justifiable, such invasions
are morally right, as long as they are done for the right reasons.
Feldman provides a short history
of nation-building, visiting Woodrow Wilson and the post World
War Two situation in Europe. While acknowledging that outsiders
cannot build democratic institutions in Iraq, he tells the reader
that that is exactly what he was sent to Iraq to do. Furthermore,
and this is where Feldman and those that agree with him show
their true patronizing colors, he insists that it doesn't matter
whether one agrees with the original invasion or not, but now
that the US is there it must help Iraq get out of its quandary.
This self-serving argument is based on the assumption that what
is best for Washington is also best for Iraq (and any other country
that Washington deems it so). This fundamental assumption renders
hollow any statements made by Feldman claiming that the US is
in Iraq for any other reason.
Keeping in mind that the book
was originally published in 2004, I hoped that Feldman might
have changed his tune in the afterword added to the new edition.
After all, many like-minded observers and participants in the
Iraq debacle have revised their positions in the wake of successes
of the Iraq insurgency and other anti-imperial phenomenon in
the country. Unfortunately, even my minimal hopes were dashed.
By continuing to dismiss these phenomenon as something other
than what they are; and by only listening to those Iraqi elements
that he wants to hear (as witnessed by his dismissal of "individual
Iraqis (who) are eager to end the US presence" as "aspirational"),
Mr. Feldman not only believes that staying in Iraq until a nation
is "built" is the practical thing for Washington to
do, it is also the moral thing to do. Only hubris would consider
the destruction of a country and the slaughter of its citizens
to be a moral act.
Recently, John Kerry, a politician
who supported the attack on Iraq but has recently issued tentative
statements indicating doubts about the war (although he, like
most Washington politicians will not call for an unconditional
and immediate withdrawal), wrote an editorial on the anniversary
of his testimony to the US Congress as a member of the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War. In that editorial, Mr. Kerry wrote
"the most important way to support our troops is to tell
the truth." Mr. Feldman's book is one more attempt to do
the opposite. He is not alone among the elites in this country.
Indeed, the New York Times recently highlighted his book
as a "should-read" in one of its Book Review
columns. Given the Times continuing support for the occupation,
this is not a surprise, since Feldman's book provides that support
with a rationale, no matter how flimsy. What the US really owes
Iraq is not a government in its own image (or some facsimile
thereof), no matter how such an endeavor is framed and labeled.
No, what we really owe Iraq is the respect it deserves to leave
it alone and the sense of justice to repay its people for the
damage that more than a dozen years of US-led war and sanctions
has caused.
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