Re: [sixties-l] The Coming War

From: Jeffrey Blankfort (jab@tucradio.org)
Date: Sat Sep 07 2002 - 19:55:16 EDT

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    > One of the aspects that has not been fully examined is the reason that Brent
    > Scocroft and James Baker, both close to George the First, are not siding with
    > George the Second's rush to invade Iraq. It's the role of Israel and its domestic
    > lobby, today more powerful than ever , which in the form of JINSA, (the Jewish
    > Inst. of National Security Affairs, see the Nation 9/2) is now dictating US Middle
    > east policy in Washington. Any careful examination of George I's record (and I
    > recommend Moshe Aren's book, Broken Covenant, Simon and Shuster, 1995, for
    > openers) will realize that Poppy has had an animus towards Israel that goes back
    > at least to his days as Veep under Reagan.

    > Then, as president, he told Yitzak Shamir that Israel could not have the $10
    > billion in loan guarantees that he requested unless Shamir agreed to freeze all
    > settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza, and that he would wait 120 days
    > for Shamir to act on it. Shamir, decided, as have other Israeli prime ministers
    > before him, to defy the president and go directly to Congress which, given the
    > massive sums that the Israel lobby has bestowed on its members, is clearly in the
    > lobby's pocket. Within a few days, 234 members of Congress wrote a letter to Bush,
    > urging him to okay the loan guarantees and this was followed up by a massive
    > invasion of Jewish lobbyists to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to act immediately.
    > Bush responded by going on TV--it was 9/11 or 9/12/91, claiming that 1000 Jewish
    > lobbyists at arrived in Washington pitted against "little old me." Although what
    > polls were taken showed the public was on his side, the lobby declared war against
    > him ("A day that will live in infamy," claimed Tom Dine, head of AIPAC, and,
    > immediately, the leading attack dogs of the Republican Right, Bill Safire and
    > George Will were on his case, attacking him for that and finding fault lines in
    > the economy. Chomsky, who is myopic when it comes to the subject of the Israel
    > lobby claimed that Bush's declaration on TV proved the lobby to be a "paper
    > tiger." (When subsequent events provedthe opposite, Chomsky, predictably, did not
    > admit his error which was not surprising since people on his God-like level never
    > do.)

    > Bush had earlier angered both Israel and the lobby by demanding that Israel stay
    > on the sidelines during the first Gulf War, and then opposing Congress's request
    > to give Israel another $650 million in compensation which he threatened to veto
    > but backed down when the appropriation passed by a veto-proof majority. In the
    > 1988 election Bush had received an estimated 36-38% of the Jewish vote. In 1992,
    > that dropped to 6-8%, and that was the difference in winning and losing.

    > Now, let's fast forward to this Spring, when George the Second, who had tried to
    > avoid dealing with the Israel-Palestine confict, was pressured by our European
    > allies to make some statement following Sharon's massive re-occupation of a number
    > of West Bank towns. "Enough is enough," he publicly declared, telling Sharon to
    > withdraw, a statement that made headlines throughout the world. Like Shamir
    > before him, and Begin before him (during the Lebanon invasion) Sharon was
    > defiant, and again Congress came to his rescue and immediately there was George
    > Will again, writing that Dubya had lost his "moral clarity," a phrase which not
    > coincidentally, both Ehud Barak and Tom Friedman used on the same op-ed page in
    > the NY Times two days ago. Bush immediately, backed off, humiliated by Israel and
    > what Pat Buchanan (in this case, and for the wrong reasons) aptly named its "Amen
    > Corner" in Congress and the media, not the first president to undergo this
    > experience, and soon was referring to Sharon as a "man of peace." That the Jewish
    > lobby had now dropped whatever reservations it had with working with the Christian
    > right as an ally was no doubt important, but this routine existed long before the
    > Falwell-Robertson-Reed crowd had that much input on our Middle East policy.

    > This brings in the role of JINSA which was founded in 1976 as a think-tank lobby
    > whose goal was to spread US power in the Middle East with support for Israel at
    > its center, and over the years, thanks to the likes of Richard Perle, it has
    > become increasingly powerful, bringing in such folks as Dick Cheney, who was on
    > its board, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Oliver North, and of equal importance a number
    > of former generals and admirals and officials from the arms industry, such as the
    > Grumman company that makes the F-16s. Thus today, we have the
    > Israel-Military-Industrial Complex writing the script in Washington. The year
    > that JINSA was founded, 1976 is quite significant and does not appear in the
    > otherwise revealing Nation article. It was in that year that Pres. Gerry Ford
    > stopped aid to Israel for six months because it was slow in removing its troops
    > from the Sinai in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Ford, irritated
    > with Israel's intransigence, decided that the time had come to downgrade the
    > US-Israel relationship and was prepared to make a major speech to that effect. Of
    > course, the news of this was leaked to the lobby which got 75 of the Senators,
    > whose loyalty to Israel (or to the bucks they receive working in its behalf) has
    > been proven time and again to be greater than their loyalty to the US public and
    > to the Constitution, to write Ford a letter, warning him about taking such a
    > step. Ford followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, and kept silent. None
    > of this is any great secret. Several books by both supporters of Israel and its
    > critics have described this phenomenon. Following the Chomsky line, however, the
    > left has studiously ignored it, feeling more comfortable with describing Israel as
    > a client state of the US when the truth is just the opposite. The Israeli
    > leadership, both Sharon and Peres, and Sharon's noxious mouthpiece, Raanan Gissin,
    > have publicly called for the US to attack Iraq in terms that even the US lackey,
    > Tony Blair hasn't mustered. It is speculated in the Israeli press, by such
    > respected figures as Meron Ben Venisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, that
    > Sharon is hoping to use a US attack on Iraq as a cover for ethnically cleansing
    > the Palesitnians from the West Bank, an act that has the support of at least half
    > of the Israelis since 1988, when in the first year of the first intifada, a poll
    > was taken (before any suicide bombers, before any Israeli civilian casualties,
    > when the Palestinians were just using stones.) For those who will accuse me of
    > replicating a modern version of the Protocols of the Learned Elders Zion, I can
    > only reply that what we see today (as the defeat of Hilliard and McKinney also
    > indicate) is life imitating bad art, and that as I told an audience in Berkeley
    > the other night, the situation today makes the Protocols read like the funny
    > papers. And that isn't funny.

    Jeff Blankfort

    > Jerry West wrote:
    >
    > A lot of talk these days about war with Iraq. The
    > talk in favour mostly by people who either don't have
    > much of a first hand understanding of war, or who put
    > greed and ideology ahead of the public welfare.
    > George Bush is the figurehead for this policy, a man
    > who dodged the Vietnam War by hiding out in the
    > National Guard. Some of his closest advisors who
    > push this agenda also managed to duck out when their
    > country called for cannon fodder. It is interesting
    > to note that some like Colin Powell and others who
    > have actually been involved in war are not too keen
    > on the idea of sending thousands of young Americans
    > off to die for the glory of George Bush and the
    > regressive neo-conservative ideology. It seems a
    > large number of Americans are not too keen on the
    > idea either, and almost none of the US's allies.
    >
    > Why is it that a nation that was instrumental in the
    > creation of the United Nations over half a century
    > ago is now so flagrantly willing to violate the UN
    > Charter and launch an aggressive war against another
    > member nation? What real justification is there for
    > this war except for that found within US politics?
    > The claim is that Iraq poses a danger to the US, yet
    > no connections have been made between Iraq and the
    > events of September 11, and US weapons inspectors who
    > have been inside Iraq have said that Iraq poses no
    > serious threat with weapons of mass destruction.
    >
    > There is also the claim that Saddam Hussein is an
    > evil character, even gassing his own people along
    > with other brutalities, and a threat to his
    > neighbours. These accusations are probably true, but
    > since when have they been the motivating force for US
    > intervention anywhere? The fact is that the US
    > routinely supports and even encourages regimes that
    > torture and suppress their people, that threaten
    > their neighbours and otherwise trod heavily upon
    > human rights. It is blatant hypocrisy for the US to
    > wrap itself with the mantle of protector of freedom,
    > democracy or human rights given the course of its own
    > foreign policy over the past fifty years. In fact
    > Saddam himself is a product of US support, and
    > evidence is coming out that even his ability to
    > manufacture and stockpile poison gas was abetted by
    > the US.
    >
    > Taking out Saddam Hussein and characters like him is
    > not a bad idea, but it must be done for the right
    > reasons and through internationally sanctioned
    > actions. A stronger and more effective United
    > Nations would be a step forward in policing rogue
    > regimes, but the US, which could drive this process,
    > has chosen to side step the UN and the broader
    > interest of all nations whenever it pleases. A
    > strong international court system could also advance
    > the case of peace and human rights, but the US has
    > seen fit to not only shun the recently created
    > International Criminal Court, but to threaten those
    > nations, such as Canada, that actively support it.
    >
    > In reality the US itself has become a rogue nation,
    > at least from the stand point of supporting human
    > rights and the ideals embodied in the documents of
    > its own creation. Through its foreign policy it has
    > derailed and set back the cause of democracy in other
    > nations, and has helped crush popular will wherever
    > the interests of US corporations have been
    > threatened. It has become a nation noted for
    > hypocrisy, and now it seeks, against almost universal
    > international disapproval, to carry out a major act
    > of aggression against another country, though evil it
    > may be, that poses no significant threat to the
    > territory of the United States.
    >
    > Canadians everywhere should voice their condemnation
    > of this proposed US action, and the Canadian
    > government should let it be known that such
    > aggressive behaviour by the US in violation of the
    > spirit of the UN Charter will not be supported.
    > Instead, Canada should make it clear that it will
    > become a haven for those US citizens who oppose this
    > act, and will do everything in its power to obstruct
    > and impede US prosecution of this war.
    >
    > Jerry West
    >
    > Copyright West's International, 2002
    >
    > - --
    > Jerry West
    > THE RECORD
    > Editor/Publisher/Janitor
    > http://www.island.net/~record
    >



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