As I mentioned the other day, David Rose in Vanity Fair has a good piece saying that neocons in high U.S. government positions prevented American overtures to the Sunni insurgents in 2004, nearly three years before such connections helped end the violence in Baghdad. Rose singles out Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, but does so without describing the religious component of their ideology: the concern for Israel's security and hatred of anyone who helped suicide bombers in Israel.
Rose should also have mentioned Michael Rubin, the Richard Perle protege, for his role. Jim Lobe connected the dots last year:
Of course, it was Rubin more than any other neo-con who repeatedly
assailed Gen. David Petraeus for trying to “appease” Baathists in his
efforts in 2004 and 2005 to pacify Mosul and al-Anbar provinces, as I
pointed out in a post
last October on the Likudist cast to Giuliani’s foreign-policy team. As
late as 14 months ago, Rubin, a de-Baathification hawk and Chalabi
acolyte from the get-go, was still complaining bitterly about Petraeus’
early efforts to co-opt the Sunni insurgency. That those efforts are
now given credit — even by Rubin’s fellow-neo-cons and most especially
Kristol, who named Petraeus the Standard’s “Man of the Year” just last
month — for what progress has been made in reducing the violence in
Iraq over the past year is ironic to say the least.
Remember the core lesson of Iraq: the former terrorist Sunnis now play an essential role in the Iraq government, and this model is portable: for it applies to Hamas becoming part of a Palestinian government.
The neocons fear just that. Lobe also reported that Doug Feith completely left out Palestine/occupied territories in his map of the Middle East in his recent book (which denied that neocons pushed the Iraq war, denied that Jewishness had anything to do with it).
Lobe's reporting, and my own, reflect Jewish efforts to explore the shadow side of neoconservatism: its Holocaust-rooted Zionism–notice "appeasement"– which the neocons themselves are never transparent about. As a rule, Jewish journalists have been afraid of this conversation breaking out in the American discourse. "In Dark Times, Blame the Jews," the nervous Forward editorialized about Walt and Mearsheimer's book two years back. And meantime Nick Goldberg in the LA Times writes that the neocons "possibly harbored dual loyalty to Israel." Of course they harbored that dual loyalty, and Jews understand this issue better than others, and ought to help to expose it, even if that means working with non-Jewish journalists on the matter.
Again and again in the 1890s Herzl was rebuffed by powerful Jews, and even by Zionists like Edmond de Rothschild, who felt that Herzl's plan to relieve Jewish suffering in Europe by creating a Jewish state in Palestine would throw a question over the "patriotism" of Jews in Europe. This has become an important, and fascinating, issue with the rise of neoconservatism. More light!
Think Chamberlain, think black umbrella, think Munich. It works every time.
Off topic: Karin Friedemann, (Joachim Martillo's wife) recently wrote this excellent article about pending "Hate Crimes" legislation (HR 1913, S 909). Mondoweiss will be interested in its Orwellian intentions to outlaw criticism of Zionism as revealed by its background authorship. It is being ushered into law through the trojan horse of "progressivism": "The Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) originally wrote this bill…The ADL, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is already heavily involved in Homeland Security's locally based "fusion centres," which collect personal data for intelligence databases that synchronise national intelligence collection with local police. ADL and SPLC have a record of illegally spying on American citizens and providing false information to law enforcement officials. [contd]
[contd] "A fusion centre in Missouri recently distributed an "intelligence" document on "hate groups" to local police, which was written by the ADL and the SPLC. It instructed the police to look for Americans who were concerned about unemployment, taxes, illegal immigration, gangs, border security, abortion, high costs of living, gun restrictions, FEMA, the IRS, and the Federal Reserve, as well as supporters of third party presidential candidates! Mainstream Christian organisations that espouse a traditional orthodox view of homosexuality were lumped into a list filled with violent neo-Nazis and skinheads while Roman Catholic institutions were singled out as "encouraging anti-Semitism and ethnic and religious chauvinism." The report also predictably vilified religiously observant Muslims and anti-war activists." http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xf... Now if this isn't neo-Soviet, I don't know what is. Totalitarian Jewish supremacist Statist are again on the march, from Tel Aviv to New York. And factions within the Zionist co-opted US government are their vessel.
"In Dark Times, Blame the Jews" OK. I’ll bite. What’s wrong with that if it’s true? In the Dark Times of the Inquisition, we blamed the Catholics and we were right. In the Dark TImes of the Salem Witch Trials, we blamed the theocratic Protestant Puritans and we were right. In the Dark TImes of the Khalifah Massacres of the 19th C, we blamed the Muslims and we were right. So if the Jews took us to war in Iraq and are now pushing a war with Iran, and it’s true, what’s wrong with blaming the Jews?
Michael Berkowitz' book, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the First World War, is relevant to this blog entry. I have some quibbles. He does not explain the difference between nationality and citizenship in that historical context, to wit: a lot of Poles were German citizens but not German nationals. Possibly because he considered it out of the scope of the book, Berkowitz does not discuss the connection between Congress Zionism and Brandeis' refugeeism. In addition, there is the backstory of the role that German Jews played in forging the concept of the German nation from which they were ultimately excluded. These issues are important because Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, who are — as far as I know — not particularly religious, were acting on an ethonational component of their ideology and not out of any concern with religion. The sort of Zionist subtext that you see in Iraq also occurred in the lead up and aftermath of WW1. In Jewish Financial Aggression, Worldwide Economic Nakba, I write:
Good man, Joachim. The Rothschilds retain the very best PR people, and are very successful at spreading the idea that anyone who takes an interest in them is a crank. It's remarkable, really. They organised the Boer war, in order to gain control of the world's largest supplies of gold, but you won't see a single book discussing this fact, except one by Arnold Leese, who was somewhat to the right of Oswald Mosely. It's amazing how effective their PR blackout is.
Bingo!
Not surprised that Michael Rubin opposed any move to partner with any Iraqi groups to fight the resistance against US occupation, or in reality, Israeli occupation. He is just one of many of the "jewish" neocons who pushed for this proxy war on behalf of Israel to shut down the last arab country that may present any future threat to Israel. If you read some of his articles on his website, he always advocated continued fight and keeping american forces in Iraq. These guys never wanted peace but wanted a US base to help Israel expand its colonialization of the middle east. He is part of the "greater Israel" group who see most of the Middle east theirs to colonize.