Here is a fabulous piece by the great Glenn Greenwald pointing out the insanity of the Israeli/neocon support for the Iraq war as a naked means of guaranteeing Israel's security. In one horrific quote Greenwald has discovered, Shimon Peres likens Saddam to Hitler. And Bill Kristol, in a parochial Jewish moment (a moment of transparency), seconds the idea. As Tom Lantos did in pushing the Iraq war back when: Saddam is Hitler. As Begin did in justifying the Lebanon war in 82: Arafat was Hitler. Always another Hitler.
Greenwald is justly outraged by the identification of American and Israeli interests that the lobby/Israel's rightwing supporters have forced on politicians. Where his analysis falls down is where it always falls down: declining to accept that this Jewish force for the Iraq war was in any way determinative. Greenwald hates Bush, as I do. But Greenwald's correct insistence that Bush is to blame for the Iraq war typically elides–as liberal Jewish intellectuals have elided from the jump in Iraq–the significant influence of intellectuals on policymaking. We never elided intellectual influence in the Great Society, in Vietnam (no Halberstam wrote a breakout book on that), etc. Nor did the neocons elide intellectual influence when they erected their war camps, the thinktanks, on the hills overlooking the White House. Ideas matter. They mattered in the destruction of Iraq. Were they the only thing that mattered? Of course not. But the moral inventory here will never be complete without a discussion of the large Jewish presence in the American establishment and the significance of that presence in pressing a Zionist agenda. Bill Kristol is on the Times op-ed page notwithstanding his terrible errors. Greenwald is at Salon. What does that signify, Glenn? (Phil Weiss)
