Mark Perry, writing (at War In Context) about his sources for his bombshell report that General David Petraeus sees the special relationship with Israel as putting American interests at risk and that he is going to the mat in the White House to effect policy:
There is no greater insult than to believe that General Petraeus or any other senior American military officer would use the lives of American soldiers as a lever to enhance their own political future. My sense is that General Petraeus neither likes nor dislikes Israel: but he loves his country and he wants to protect our soldiers. The current crisis in American relations with Israel is not a litmus test of General Petraeus’s loyalty to Israel, but of his, and our, concern for those Americans in uniform in the Middle East.
It is, perhaps, a sign of the depth of “the Biden crisis” that every controversy of this type seems to get translated into whether or not America and its leaders are committed to Israel’s security. This isn’t about Israel’s security, it’s about our security.
The Petraeus effect is discernible in David Axelrod‘s struggle to embrace Israel even as he castigates it for the "insult" –and the "destructive" effect it has had on the "fragile peace process," whatever that is.
As any thinking person knows, no American general would come by such a profound realization overnight. The fact that Israel has been putting American lives at risk has been known to millions around the world, and quite a few inside the US for quite some time. It would seem that the Biden insult has provided many American patriots with the opportunity to speak against Israel’s damaging friendship without being labeled “anti-Semitic”. In other words, many in the administration, at the State Department, the Justice Department, the Pentagon and Langley know exactly the damage Israel continues to wreak on the US, but are afraid to speak out due to The Lobby’s iron grip on American government and discourse.
Don’t worry. Now that he’s stopped toeing the line, and sold out the people who run Capital Hill to the American public, they’ll exile Petraeus soon enough. How many top commanders in the war(s) did Bush go through? Hell, Obama’s already exceeding Bush in atrocious drone attacks on civilians. I’m sure he can outdo Bush on that too.
Maybe we can ask Cynthia McKinney and Jimmy Carter to keep a seat warm for him.
This is a very interesting development. There have been a number of retired officers that have had a fairly realistic attitude about Israel such as Zunni, Scowcroft, Clark and Wilkerson but I had not idea that it would show up in the top levels of active US Army officers. Of course, Fallon and Mullen seemed to have a fairly skeptical view of the Special Relationship but they are Navy men and I always attributed that to a lingering anger over the failure of the US to honor the sacrifices of the crew of the US Liberty.
As Mark points out in this article, yes AIPAC is a powerful lobby but there is no lobby more powerful than the US military. Just imagine what this could mean. Most of us are cynical that any force inside the US could overcome the Israeli lobby but there is one historical precedent that we should consider. Remember the McCarthy era and how the anticommunist hysteria ruled the nation and terrified nearly every elected leader in the US including Eisenhower. And remember how, at the pinnacle of his power, McCarthy attacked the US Army and within months his power was shattered. Sometimes Phil engages in hyperbole but this development might very well be a bombshell.
I agree with you completely, Syvanen, except the part about Phil’s hyperbole. I dont think Phil engages in that; he engages in a certain writer’s hope, which started this blog to begin with and has proven itself to be true. Phil and Adam are going to be able to trace the American change in its attitude towards Israel through their blog posts and commenters in an historical book in the not-too-distant future.
As you suggest, Syvanen, I think this is a bombshell.
The two links that Phil gives should absolutely be read by everyone here, especially Paul Woodward’s piece with the extra info he got from Mark Perry. Israel has crossed a line it cannot get back. Get the popcorn.
MRW I have to agree with you with what Phil is trying to do. He and Adam are really out there. I am hesitant to join in their enthusiasm.
I was really optimistic in 1992 during the Oslo process when Clinton, Rabin and Perez appeared on the Whitehouse lawn and announced to the world the end of the war. I am embarrassed to say that I thought Edward Said was an extremist for denouncing those talks as insufficient. He was correct. As it turned out the Israelis used this peace process as a ploy to expand their goal of turning the WB into Israeli territory. I was wrong. The Israelis and their US lobby knew all along that the goal was annexation of the WB. They were playing us as fools. I am somewhat encouraged the the US military is at least aware of what is going on.
Syvanen,
I dont think the US military position is going to have an effect tomorrow. But it will in two months and thereafter. When it sinks in, the Christian Zionists will be viewed as traitors; ain’t no way the CZs will be able to advance their lunacy…and there goes the neighborhood.
Why two months, specifically? Forgive me for playing the eternal cynic here, but I’ve lost faith in the capacity for the United States to heal.
I’m counting on the upcoming election cycle as being the point at which the apple cart goes over the cliff’s edge, actually. I hope I’m wrong.
Chaos,
Two months may be arbitrary. But what is important is word of the military to the Christian community. Mark Perry’s article and Paul Woodward’s follow-up (with Mark Perry’s additional comments) are going to be balls-out weapons against the Christian Zionist world that Israel is no longer some protected place. Maybe the leadership will still go along. But when the base hears that the military leadership perceives the vaunted Israel as a threat to US troops…whoops…big changeroo.
Well… if the base hears, MRW. Remember those sorry wanks mostly watch Fox News.
I remember reading articles a year or so ago regarding how the Christian Zionists have significantly infiltrated the US military staff and grunts. Most of the articles I found in Jewish American publications.
I don’t know how it is in the army bases, but in the Defense Community in DC, they definitely watch Fox News. They’re not bad people, but they’re profoundly ignorant. In fact, the culture and structure weeks out people who know what they hell they’re talking about. If you’ve spent too much time in the Middle East, you have a hart time getting a security clearance, and you’re considered suspect because you might have “gone native” — brainwashed, naive, they have all kinds of code words for “stop listening to those brown people and get serious.” I just saw the movie Green Zone, and it captures the atmosphere in the Pentagon and its think tank satellites very well.
Things might be slowly changing — I think they are — but there are huge, thick walls of willful ignorance to get through. I’m very cautiously and very slightly hopeful.
link to
Sulphur and brimstone Christian Zionists in a pact with white phosphorous Jews, now there’s a marriage made in hell. And while Zionists consider themselves to be white, do Christian Zionists agree? There is no other way to prove you are white other than by acts of racism, but how far will Jews have to go to prove that they are white? Moving Israel from CENTCOM to EUCOM because Israeli Jews are just as white as other Europeans now threatens to be undone.
I am going to very timidly suggest that I see a little problem, a tiny one, with Phil: as soon as a guy says anything right about the I-P issues he becomes a hero to Phil.
Petreaus is still Petreaus, and he’s still an American military General, and his primary interest is abvoiding an accounting, through either chaos or escalation, for the crimes (much, much more than the waterboarding; the administrative, medical, financial and military crimes, just to start with) of the Bush era.
Or did you think that all those guys, who so eagerly carried out the multiple criminal plans of the Bush regime and oh, BTW, they screwed it all up. we have been beaten by Iraq and Afghanistan for God’s sake have been saving all the good results from these eight year wars which were supposed to take sixty days, for Obama? I doubt it.
A lot of people, unfortunately, as we have seen here over and over, make the right noises about I-P for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t change who they are and what they do. Don’t get sucked in.
If Gen. Petraeus wanted to change things, he’d get together with a half dozen likeminded others of flag rank (I’m sure there are many more than that), and change things. And I’m not talking about another 33 PowerPoint slides.
America First, Petraeus is not a policy man, he’s military. He can’t “change things.” He can only identify threats, Legally and constitutionally.
AF: Lay off the fluoride, dude.
Because, I assume, it’s destroying our “precious bodily fluids?”
You got it, Mandrake.
Yes AF we are all aware of your fascistic instincts. We have seen how well this kind of advice works in Argentina (and many other places) but thankfully our military has a tradition of expressing its interests in different ways. We do have our problems, to be sure, but all things considered our traditions are preferable.
Gosh dern it, syvanen, the US military is the last place where the moderate Christian ethics of our fourfather founderers has not been mongrelised by the Semetic influence. Of course we should have a military coup! For Jesus and America!
Professor James Petras writing for the Global Research (May 4, 2008) called General David Petraeus Zionism’s Military Poodle: “In pointing to Iran, Petraeus played the dangerous game of echoing the Israeli line and providing support for a military attack on Iran promoted by the leadership of major American Jewish organizations. Even while Petraeus was covering up his failure (in Iraq) by blaming Iran, (the US) Iraqi puppet government was praising the Iranian government for helping to stablize the country by using its influence on the Shia militias to hold their fire. Puppet Prime Minister Maliki invited Iranian President (Ahmadinejad) to Baghdad, signed trade agreements and praised their co-operation and efforts to stablize the country”.
Why Washington fears Islamic Iran?
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
I agree Rehmat.
I think it’s suspiciously convenient that the neocons’ presidential trump card wants to alter our relationship with Israel while he manages two of its wars and beats the drum for Iran. And doesn’t anyone find it odd that news of Petraeus’ anti-establishment briefing suddenly appears AFTER Israel’s public diss of the Obama administration?
In 2013, the story will go something like: Unlike his stooge predecessor, Pres. Petrareus doesn’t take crap from Israel and only kills in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc. for US.
Are the [a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/339885/man-of-the-year/the-editors
"] Neocons [/a] bolstering Petraeus’ US-first credentials (“he stood up to AIPAC!”) for a presidential run, greedily rubbing their hands envisioning ‘usable nukes’ falling on Teheran? [a href="http://petraeus2012.com/"] Petraeus is Ike [/a]
Sorry, hyperlinks messed up… Should be
Neocons bolstering Petraeus’ US-first credentials for a presidential run?
NRO Man of the Year:
link to article.nationalreview.com
Petraeus is Ike:
link to petraeus2012.com
Consider their alternatives – Palin, Huckabee, Romney. Known losers all.
So will the bus be aimed at Petraeus after it gets done grinding up Kucinich?
The wheels on the bus go round and round…
An American General who is loyal to America?
Wonders never cease!
antisemitism alert!
link to mideast.foreignpolicy.com
Petreaus is only loyal to Petreaus, and escaping an accounting.
If it ever became known how badly the US military handles itself, its money and the American lives entrusted to it, it’d be the end of the “volunteer Army” Even worse, it may be the end of the contracter system, the military could never stand that!
Just because a guy makes the right noises once in a lifetime doesn’t change anything.
I think JSF is right on this as they are right about most things–
link
Donald, I read the JSF report. It’s not complete, and I think they’re getting it wrong. Patraeus’s area, CENTCOM, encompasses all the oil-producing nations. Oil is (1) a strategic national defense issue, and (2) the universal currency.
Those countries are selling to the world’s number one needer (yeah, I just made that word up) of fuel: China. As the US appears weaker and weaker to these nations, the threat of lack of US support becomes a non-issue. They have a big, and to them rational, country they can sell to. It’s close by. It pays its bills. And it doesn’t demand anything of these nations politically other than to deliver the oil.
We only heard one point from that PowerPoint show. We didn’t hear its’ entirety. How can Israel be a threat to our troops in Afghanistan? We need 800,000 gal of fuel per day there, which is delivered at an all-in cost of $400/gal. You name it is engaged in getting that fuel to the nether parts of Afghanistan. When the oil-producing nations decide the US/Israel no-space relationship will endanger their rulership with their own people those oil purchases are going to go to another country than the US; that’s fulfilling their self-interest. China is locking up oil and rare earth (even though it has 97% of the world’s supply of one of them) contracts around the world, including Canada.
The most important thing to the US military is fuel. It is number one.
In the AP interview of Axlerod, he seems to be on drugs; very sluggish in his thought delivery. I bet nobody in Obama’s tight little inner circle on all things Israel will even mention that the US might just go a step farther than repremanding Israel for its
settlement activity in the face of official US policy against settlements for over 40 years, which is also in the face of all the world’s countries which have not recognized the legitimacy of those land ever on-going land grabs–by (at least) threatening to pull the welfare plug on comparatively very wealthy Israel–which, btw, does afford health
insurance for all its (at least) Jewish citizens.
link to news.yahoo.com
“There is no greater insult than to believe that General Petraeus or any other senior American military officer would use the lives of American soldiers as a lever to enhance their own political future.”
ROTFL! Of course they would. But at this point, the highest ambition of the US military: AVOID AN ACCOUNTING!!! with the collary “For God’sd sake, don’t let Obama do better than Bush” Where Bush fails, Obama must fail worse.
A mideast blockbuster development, and where is the NY Times and correspondent Ethan Bronner with all his sources in the IDF? Was he scooped? Or did he know what the US defense chiefs told their IDF counterparts about danger to US troops, and simply didn’t bother to report it. And what about his editors? The NYT continues to shill for Israel, both on the news and editorial pages.
Good questions! Damn good!
Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.
[a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/final-destination-iran-1.1013151
"] source [/a]
Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.
link to heraldscotland.com
I wish I could say I was shocked. I’m still dismayed, at least.
So what would the reaction of the British public be to this news?
Traditionally our reaction to everything involving Diego has been extremely, rather disgracefully apathetic, but if it’s used as a base for an attack on Iran that leads to economic devastation we might get a bit excited.
I might be pleased to think that Petraeus or someone intends to get a grip on the settlements but I’m also a bit dismayed to see how militarised American politics seem to be. A whiff of Weimar?
I still can’t quite see Obama ordering a ruinous attack on Iran and I don’t think that the Iranians can either. Hence their boldness.
I dont know who linked to this Grant Smith article (I have so many windows open I dont feel like trudging through them) but this is a must read:
Israel’s Lobby Imposes Crippling Sanctions on America — Again
link to alethonews.wordpress.com