Tonight Chris Matthews, my favorite broadcaster, followed the Liz Cheney story with a segment on Cheney’s new org, Keep America Safe. Matthews said boldly that Keep America Safe is a neoconservative "front" group, ala The American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century, and the Committee on the Present Danger. He said that Bill Kristol, who pushed the Iraq war for years, is involved with Cheney’s group after an unsuccessful stint at the New York Times. Now Kristol wants to bomb Iran. Has since 2006. Then very nearly spluttering, Matthews asked Who funds these groups?
Good question.
His guests were investigative journalists David Corn and Mike Isikoff. Everyone was very mocking of Kristol’s efforts, and the neocon orgs. Corn said that neocon groups were "genetically" the same as Communist/Trotskyite/Stalinist sectarians of the 30s, they shared that heritage. Isikoff answered Matthews’s question by saying that these groups got "seed money from wealthy donors," including Sheldon Adelson, casino king.
The group laughed about Adelson for a bit.
The segment was a disgraceful charade. Adelson and Kristol care about Israel. That is the core of their political engagement. That is why Kristol, a proudly parochial Jew, wants to attack Iran. The subject was never broached.
Matthews regularly brings up Irish Catholic identity when he has a fellow Irish Catholic on. In this segment, it would have been only fair to a viewer to bring up Jewish identity and Zionism. But Isikoff and Corn are both Jewish, and neither of them opened the door on these important matters, and fearless Chris Matthews is afraid to touch the matter. Corn’s "genetic" statement was a kind of code.
How helpful is this to a viewer when we all know that neoconservatism grew out of the Jewish community and is still largely Jewish/Zionist? And its foreign-policy concerns always revolve around Israel. When will the ban on mainstream coverage of Walt and Mearsheimer end?
As to funding, as I have reported, Sheldon Adelson gave three tranches of $100,000 to the Republican party in 2000. The last one came after Bush’s victory was affirmed by the Supreme Court, in December, and at the very same time Doug Feith, the nebbish lawyer and Zionist, was named an Under Secretary of Defense. Adelson and Feith were both involved with One Jerusalem, which was opposed to the peace process. They got their wish. Bush had nothing to do with the peace process. Feith believes that Judea and Samaria, biblical words for the West Bank, are part of Israel.
What’s money got to do with American politics?
And as to that other neocon front group, AEI, it supplied more brains to the Bush administration than anyone. Even Dick Cheney was at AEI. What did he drink there? AEI is chaired by Bruce Kovner, the secretive hedge king who is closely associated with Zionist neocons. What is the role of Jewish money in our politics, and how much of that Jewish giving is wrapped around a dedication to the Jewish state? How many liberal hawks also care about Israel? Why did Chuck Schumer vote for the Iraq war? Why did Hillary?
Matthews would never cut Christians a break in a similar religious/political context.
” That is why Kristol, a proudly parochial Jew, wants to attack Iran. ”
Actually, Billy is happy to attack any place with Muslims. Afghanistan and Pakistan are both target-rich countries according to the Foreign Policy Initiative –starring: BK, Dan Senor, the Kagans, Abe ‘bomb ‘em all’ Greenwald …
The fact that these characters can appear in daylight, let alone promote their batshit Zionist agenda AGAIN without being institutionalized, is surreal. Fucking surreal .
They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.
Matthews knows the score. He just doesn’t want to go out on a limb by namings the Lobby. He would rather get one of his guests to do it instead by feeding them questions he full well knows the answer to.
Look what happened to Pat Buchanan when he mentioned the lobby directly, in 1991. Yes Matthews is liberal, Pat right wing–but being right wing has never hurt someone’s TV marketability. As Crossfire host, Buchanan was the most popular conservative in America after Reagan in the 1980′s. For Chris Matthews, lesson learned.
Jon Stewart gives good insight in Matthews’ attitude here link to alternet.org
. I’d expect exactly nothing of value from him.
What intonation should I imagine in “my favorite broadcaster”?
Good question. Recall when he was at Halliburton, Cheney opposed sanctions against Iran.
Related question: Phil, have you (or anyone else) been able to trace Jewish money to the Christian Zionist evangelicals or any of their broadcast operations?
The Rabbi who runs jewsonfirst.org has. He did it in his story about the Republican Jewish Coalition backing the anti-Muslim DVD Obsession that was disseminated in hundreds of thousands of newspapers along the east coast during the election. He also outed the director of John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) organization as Jewish. He wrote about how Danny Ayalon, former Israeli Ambassador to the US wrote an incendiary letter to go along with that DVD. Ayalon is now a Knesset member in the same party as Avigdor Lieberman.
jewsonfirst.org wrote a long report about all this, but the best parts on their site are in the smaller reports leading up to the final one.
Corn said that neocon groups were “genetically” the same as Communist/Trotskyite/Stalinist sectarians of the 30s
Code? I get really tired of this line of thought. But my confusions, my spinning head when I first encountered it has given way to more calm by now.
I think in times like these the main phenomenon we are confronted with is to what high degree we all necessarily use truisms. I doubt that Trotskyism is a prominent strain in the neocon’s thought. I really do. I think from their point of view it was a juvenile endeavor. They are Americans, no doubt. BUT in their minds America and Israel are joined at the hips facing the same threat out there and thus are on the exactly same mission.
exactly same mission.
Moved to the wrong place.
shit happens: on exactly the same mission.
“They are Americans, no doubt. BUT in their minds America and Israel are joined at the hips facing the same threat out there and thus are on the exactly same mission. ”
Yes, but their views are way out of the mainstream, and being a fraction of a very small minority descended from fairly recent immigrants doesn’t help.
I’m not even sure that I buy the claims that neocons believe majority Americans have the same beef with the Muslim world that they believe Jews have. I just don’t believe that their concerns are that broad.
Todd, concerning the “same beef with the Muslim world”, a sentence by Condoleezza Rice is deeply stored in my mind. It was in an interview in the German weekly DER SPIEGEL (the mirror) during her visit here, 2003/4?
Is there a necessity for enemies or only a demand for correct prognostications of who will be the next?
A marriage of convenience between Israeli and American security and military complex interests? How deep is it? You can’t only produce the stuff, you have to test and use it, to open up for new lines of production. This deeply economic interest is always buried beneath slogans about US power combined with an ethical mission. Bringing freedom to the world.
The American argument for Europe–Venus, versus America as Mars–has been present for quite some time now. American journalist preached we should have a comparable military budget here in Europe, long, long before 911.
Leander, I don’t doubt that groups other than neocons would like to convince me that I have natural enemies in Muslims, but the reasons for doing so are different. I guess the real question is how enmeshed neocons are with the other groups.
Chris Matthews was the only main streamer that I heard questioning the validity of the intelligence and those who were pushing hard.
Read that Scooter Libby placed a call to Tim Russert to complain about Matthews push back and challenges having to do with the run up to the invasion.
Now for me he did not push back hard enough. Never had many folks who had substantive arguments about the false pre war intelligence . Like Scott Ritter, Prof Juan Cole, Ray McGovern, Flynt Leverett.
Kathleen, I’ll concede that your post is a bit more reasonable than mine…