I missed this line from neocon Eliot Cohen’s piece on Iran in the Wall Street Journal today. It’s the last line, and a threat to Obama about the power of the lobby.
if, as is most likely, President Obama presides over the emergence of a nuclear Iran, he had best prepare for storms that will make the squawks of protest against his health-care plans look like the merest showers on a sunny day.
And, implicitly, a suggestion that some of the health-care rebellion against Obama was fed by Israel lobbyists. I went to a lot of these demos this summer, and there are Israel lobbyists all around.
The message to Obama is, I am guessing, the lobby will give you health care reform if you give us Iran. I was concerned when Obama demanded a freeze on WB settlement expansion at the same time that he started pushing his health care plans. The danger with that approach is that he invited the lobby to ally itself with insurance and pharma lobbies to work together. Simple political reality here– do not push two controversial issues at the same time, you are inviting two unrelated opposition groups to enter into coalition.
I thought those guys in the Obama administration understood this possibility and must have had a larger plan. Think I was wrong. After Obama was forced to yield to Netanyahoo’s defiance last week, the lobby sees his weakness and now feel empowered to become more aggressive against Iran. Now they can push him to not only accept further WB colonial expansion AND aggressive war threats against Iran. In exchange he has picked up a few votes for health “reform” that no one has any idea what that means.
This is looking bad. I do not know if it was simple incompetence or well placed players inside his administration manipulating events.
“The danger with that approach is that he invited the lobby to ally itself with insurance and pharma lobbies to work together. Simple political reality here.”
Syvanen, I saw the same danger at the time, several months ago.
“I do not know if it was simple incompetence or well placed players inside his administration manipulating events.”
But wouldn’t that be, well, treasonous? At a minimum, highly disloyal – and who could expect any of his closest aids of that?
U.S. and other intelligence agencies no doubt had knowledge of the second secret nuclear facility long ago and held it as a trump card and it was played at a high-profile event with coordination among allies.
Look at the ducks in the row: Ahmadinejad rigs an election in Iran and a near-coup ensues, with ongoing instability in the leadership of both the political and religious classes there. Ahmadinejad is severely weakened, with great credibility problems within non-jihadist Islam and the rest of the world. Obama kills stupid Bush missile defense program Russia didn’t want. Russia then lines up to put pressure both on israel and Iran regarding any attack by israel on Iran, i.e.; don’t do it. England and France line with the U.S. to rachet up pressure on Iran vis-a-vis striking a deal with the West. Sanctions regime is readied to apply real pressure on Iran. Obama chairs Security Council and makes non-proliferation speech. “Pre-emptive strike” rhetoric reappears all over the place immediately after Brown, Sarkozy, Obama statement on Iran’s secret facility.
If this all culminates with a sanctions regime buckling Ahmadinejad’s power and toppling the mullahs at last, then Obama looks like a genius and israel is played merely as a threat off in the wings. If israel gets its way, it will get the U.S. to acquiesce to their attack at some point so they can further destabilize the region in the interests of their play for becoming the regional superpower through the blood and treasure of America. I sincerely hope Obama has zero intention of allowing any kind of israeli attack on Iran and is merely using them to rattle sabers.
”fed by Israel lobbyists“ – Of course it was. The health-care rebellions were copycats of Max Blumenthal’s Israel videos in vitriol and labeling. I’ll bet the Republican Jewish Coalition, the same group that disseminated the anti-Muslim DVD Obsession in hundreds of thousands of US newspapers under the CUFI umbrella, is in it up to its eyeballs. That wonderful Rabbi who runs jewsonfirst.org had the Obsession story nailed; maybe he’s tracking this one.
I’m thinking that Israeli interests are at play in the birther movement. Orly Taitz holds an Israeli passport and the latest thrust in coming from fundamentalist christians. Can the Lobby mobilize christian zionists? Do they?
correction, should read: that disseminated hundreds of thousands of the anti-Muslim DVD Obsession in a few eastcoast US newspapers under the CUFI umbrella
Earlier last night I inserted on another thread this interpretation of Eliot Cohen’s WSJ article. It fits more appropriately here:
Notice how the title of the article suggests that we must choose between an attack on Iran or a nuclear-ARMED Iran, and then the text proceeds to argue as follows:
1) Negotiations have no chance at all.
2) Obviously, we can’t contemplate containment of a nuclear capability in Iran (even though there is still no evidence that it intends actually to make a bomb). Iran is inherently evil and has been waging war on the U.S. since 1979 (not to mention Israel, OK?).
3) Regrettably, an Israeli attack would not be able to inflict enough damage even though the very existence of Israel is at stake here.
4) So the best solution is a massive attack by American forces.
5) But Obama is too weak and cowardly to do this, and he is not willing to use his “rhetorical skills” to whip the American public into a berserk frenzy of support.
6) But we (neocons) will get it done somehow because we are nothing if not persistent and resourceful. (And don’t forget we can call on lots of help from our Lobby friends. Plus the old reliable MSM.)
Stay tuned. The curtain has not yet fallen on the first act of this marathon drama, and we still have two acts to go.
I really don’t think that these people (meaning these American Zionists) realize just how dangerous is the ground on which they are treading.
I think these Zionists get a high from treading on this ground. Funny how he makes this veiled threat in broad daylight. “….he had best prepare for storms that will make the squawks of protest against his health-care plans look like the merest showers on a sunny day.” -those are words of betrayal. He is telling the president do something about this foreign country or we’re coming after you. Who’s that, you and your media buddies?
Watch chicken hawk Cohen very closely. He’s taken much more seriously than the famous neocons like Podhoretz, who are blowhards who can be counted on to repeat talking points once matters are decided by others. Cohen’s perch, SAIS, is a incubator of budding neocons. Cohen plays the kindly mentor, teaching an entertaining course on Thucydides. He converts students to the hard core neocon vision by the rewards their network in DC can offer, and also by their sense of moral clarity, which is terribly seductive. That approach worked on many of us in the Cold War. I can still recall how refreshing Jean Kirkpatrick’s message was in the dreary days of coexistence. Nothing more inspiring than the ability to fight absolute evil with absolutely no risk.
Yes, Eliot Cohen is certainly a chicken hawk. But in some of his past articles he was wont to find a way to slip mention that his son was in Iraq (and therefore his views should be respected in matters of war). Sort of a talisman, too, I think, to ward off any suspicions about his loyalties.
Cohen wants the USA to topple the Iranian regime–again. The current Iranian regime came to power as the result of the USA’s first coup which tore down a more, secular, democractic Iran. Israel has had a preemptive war policy since 1967. The Busch Doctrine
incorporated a companion policy. Israel intends to repeat taking propaganda directed against it as
sufficient trigger to retain and expand its hegemony in the Middle East. Why are the
neocons still in so many influntial slots after Shrubco’s eight years was booted to the
curb? Iraq was never an imminent threat to the USA, and neither is Iran. Yet the
chicken hawks are repeating the Big Lie process again–while Uncle Sam’s feet have
been stuck in two quagmires going on a decade… Looks like the teeming masses will
never get rid of that harness, no matter whom they vote into office.
Phil on antiwar radio the other day said that 45%+/- of Democratic party money comes from Jewish circles. At 2 percent of the US population that’s cause for serious concern.
Uncle Sam, as you say, will wear that harness indefinitely if something doesn’t change. No wonder the Democrats are such cowards when speaking of Israel. There’s probably ransom on the head of Kucinich.
And, implicitly, a suggestion that some of the health-care rebellion against Obama was fed by Israel lobbyists.
I’ve suspected this, although I question how much of an impact they might have had with so many other powerful interests opposed to health care reform. The best way to keep Pres. Obama from focusing attention on Israeli refusal to negotiate in good faith with Palestinians, which has led to a festering threat to US national security, is to keep him too busy putting out other fires that pose a more immediate danger.
Pres. Obama has not 100% toed the AIPAC line. Colonial Zionists do NOT want him to have a successful presidency. If this suspicion is true, then it is dual-loyalty on display with all its ugliness: damn what’s best for America, hamstring this guy so he can’t inconvenience Israeli ethnic cleansing and colonization in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. If the Lobby pushes too hard and leaves him with nothing to lose, he can hurt them very badly. /raiseglass Here’s to hoping they overstep.
“And, implicitly, a suggestion that some of the health-care rebellion against Obama was fed by Israel lobbyists. I went to a lot of these demos this summer, and there are Israel lobbyists all around”
I really, really wish I hadn’t ever read that. Simply appalling. So if Obama doesn’t completely capitualte on Israel, they will harass or block him in any area where they can exert influence. Charming.
It’s not surprising, and it’s really quite ugly when you think about it. Zionists are playing up the very anti-Semitic stereotype they abhor — the notion of Jews pulling strings behind the scenes. Really, this sort of behavior on their part is a rank insult to the vast majority of Jews, worldwide, who will have nothing to do with this sort of behavior and, furthermore, many of whom, being Americans, rather need that health care reform themselves. Like I keep saying, Zionists are the biggest threat to Jews worldwide, hands down.
I came to the conclusion quite a while that our relationship with Israel is going to be the death of the US — from helping to block health care and other meaningful reforms, to dragging us into a war with Iraq to serve their purposes (because it certainly didn’t serve the purposes of the American public…) and now, trying a repeat performance with Iran.
This is another way in which Israel is bad for the Jews, not just the Israelis. The perceived necessity to support Israeli crimes leads the inexorably into supporting other sorts of crimes, in complicity.
“4) So the best solution is a massive attack by American forces”
Something I am determined to find out is this: The early Zionists even up to the time of Statehood for Israel, always made an assumption that the ME would be under European colonial control in certain ways for the foreseeable future, right?
They did not think that Israel, even if it acheived statehood of its own, would be left in a sea of independent Arab countries, who could not be controlled by European colonial interests, I tend to think?
Doubtless there are others on this blog who can speak with better authority on this topic, but one notes that a lot of the Arab governments were installed by and continue to be influenced by Western concerns, particularly business concerns. Like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, for example, though I think the latter example might be getting their heads on straight about the matter. Compare and contrast those with Middle Eastern governments who have thrown off that yoke — Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and kind of sort of Iraq (late in the game Saddam was playing, at any rate) — and how we (as in the Western quasi-post-colonial world, of which Israel is an extension) treat those countries.
I would have to say colonialism is not dead, not quite yet. Israel’s presence in Gaza, the West Bank, Shebaa Farms and the Golan Heights, and our presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan prove quite handily that it isn’t.
Not to mention China’s presence in Tibet and other places, and Russia’s overtures toward Georgia. Not examples of Western colonialism, per se, but one must strive to be even handed in one’s criticisms.
“And, implicitly, a suggestion that some of the health-care rebellion against Obama was fed by Israel lobbyists. I went to a lot of these demos this summer, and there are Israel lobbyists all around.”
If Zionist/Lobby types don’t get what they want from Obama, will they try to manipulate the anger that most Americans feel over immigration and demographic change to their favor? A cohesive and strong America allied with Israel would be far better for Israel’s interests, since that’s what they really care about.
Isn’t that ironic? A nation of founded by violent hostile takeover by immigrants — Israel — is attempting to inflame anti-immigration rhetoric in the US — itself a nation of immigrants, for the triple axle irony.
The real irony is going to come when, by doing what they thought was unifying the United States and making it a stronger patsy — uh, I mean, “ally” — what they’re really going to do is condemn the US to a painful death as our economy continues to stagnate, crumble and dissolve into oblivion because we can’t fix anything that’s actually broken.
If healthcare is an easy issue to exploit, then immigration would be the mother of all exploitable issues. I don’t believe that the Israel lobby is responsible for the anger people displayed at the rallies against Obamacare, but I can see the usual suspects exploiting the issue of immigration and the unasked for and pre-decided demographic change that Americans are expected to swallow without questions.
If Obama doesn’t get on board with an attack on Iran, and there has to be an issue to exploit in order to divert attention, control the masses or cut deals with other politicians, then immigration is the issue, poor economy or not–but especially in this economy!
Good observation, Phil. I’ve yet to see anyone else ‘connect the dots’ between the health-care circus and the Israeli lobby.
The obvious guess is that we’ve just witnessed the trading of Obama’s healthcare plan for US action against Iran. Note the timelines and the sudden turn in Congressional/MSM support for the public option as Iran takes center stage.
I have always thought that it was a mistake to try to go forward simultaneously on the ME and health care.
It seems to me that there was some chance of getting health care, but it would have been almost impossible to get anything done with the Netanyahu (or any other Israeli) government and certainly to try to do so would only gain the hostility of AIPAC, which would probably otherwise have been indifferent or even sympathetic to health care.
Obviously AIPAC objective is to weaken Obama, therefore by obstructing health care they can achieve that or maybe even trade their future support for health care for an attack on Iran.
I think all of this shows an enormous lack of strategic sense on Obama’s part. It appears that running for president is not a preparation for the presidency.
It would have been nice to have had health care, I have little hope of ever seeing peace in the Middle East.