The establishment consensus is cracking. A new report by Mark Perry has it that David Petraeus has gotten religion on the Israel/Palestine conflict– as any thinking person with responsibility for American lives in the Middle East does– and is now mainlining the Walt and Mearsheimer realist critique of our foreign policy in the Middle East into the Obama administration, lately, in a briefing to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen that played out in the days after the Biden slap:
The [Petraus] briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow…and too late." …
[T]wo days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command – or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus’s reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region’s most troublesome conflict.
The Mullen briefing and Petraeus’s request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus’s request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied ("it was dead on arrival," a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama Administration decided it would redouble its efforts – pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen’s trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians "in a larger, regional, context" – as having a direct impact on America’s status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.
Israel didn’t.
Rachel Corrie got what she deserved.
Rachel Corrie got what she deserved.
How low would some members of the God’s “chosen” club go to defend the theft of homes and land and dignity from a defenseless people? One fat American or Candian sounding man would go so far as to declare, twice, “Rachel Corrie got what she deserved.” Well, fat man, if Rachel Corrie deserved to be crushed to death under an Israeli bulldozer, then all of us deserve the same. Your fat ass especially.
It’s one thing defending Israel’s security needs. And it’s another defending thuggery and utter lawlessness. Israel is a lawless state where even the supreme court is just another monument for tourists to gawp at as their hasbara planned tour takes them through God’s promised land – where, it would seem, his jurisdiction ends.
See the repulsive fat man 1.20 in to this video:
link to youtube.com
And read this:
link to richardsilverstein.com
That silverstein piece is Important. I’d like to see it frontpaged.
Well, this is vaguely amusing, but having closely followed what we’ve been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, having the United States take over on Palestinian affairs, whether in any functional capacity or merely as a matter of bureaucracy, isn’t going to be a change.
Petreus only has half the picture. People in the Middle East (and around the world) are equating what the US and ISraeli militaries do because the same activities — torture, drone attacks, white phosphorous, etc. — are employed by both militaries.
Petreus taking over would merely confirm what everybody’s whispering about — that the US and Israel really have declared war on Muslim civilians themselves.
“Any thinking person with responsibility for American lives in the Middle East” would immediately withdraw all Americans from the Middle East.
Whilst Israel has a demographic problem, that ain’t going to happen.
Hmmm, last year Mullen flew to israel and sternly warned them not to do another USS Liberty-style false flag operation against our forces to try to initiate an attack on Iran, and now Patraeus wants I/P under his purview?
With those hideous Kagans skulking around Patraeus all the time I have my doubts about his motives, but I sure hope it is as Phil says it is, a much-too-late recognition by our military leaders that israel is the bad actor in the region
Mullens and Petraeus are making empty threats. We all remember how the USS Liberty incident was handled, right? As if Israel can’t count on a repeat performance. The US cannot do otherwise without admitting that they conspired to cover up an attack on their own forces. And the powers that be are unwilling to confront that level of honesty.
That’s right Chaos! And speaking of chaos, that is the US military’s only hope for avoiding an accounting, and that is what Petreaus, and almost the entire high-up staff is trying desperately to create.
Otherwise somebody might want an answer to why the US lost to Iraq, and can’t beat Afgfhanistan. Or why they embarked on this missions without demurr, knowing good and goddam well what would be the result.
And if they didn’t know what would be the result, we get right back to the competency issue, huh? In order to have a volunteer Army, there needs to be at least a general feeling that the Army won’t throw your life away.
And of course, they refuse to send in the marines to rescue Americans taken to ‘administrative detention.’
ROTFL!! Gosh, is David Petreaus going to get religion on the IP issue now, now that Obama is President? Gosh, who coulda guessed that would happen? Just to help Obama down the tubes, after he signed on to all the AIPAC positions, more or less?
Good old Obama, always willing to cover the backs of those who will stick a knife into his.
Why on earth would anyone without a drive toward political suicide leave the Bush crew in charge, so they can be there to trip Obama up whenever possible
No, nothing is going to change, but they have no problem screwing things up for Obama any way they can. Notice none of this was ever thought of during the Bush administration, when everything was going so well.
And of course, Petreaus has his own political ambitions to think about.
Won’t even comment on Petreaus as a “thinking person”, cause it’s such an obvious double oxymoron.
Au contraire, Moose man. This gives Obama flexibility on IP if he wants to take advantage of it.
BTW, what is the difference between a double oxymoron and a single one. Please illustrate with your example.
Double oxymoron? Easy! Petreaus is neither “thinking” or is he a “person”. He’s a General, and that pretty much leaves him out of both groups. If he was a member of either group, he wouldn’t be a General.
Petreaus had no problem going along with Bush’s criminal wars. Do you really think he will do the Palestinians any good? Besodes, he is completely incompetent, from an organisation (today’s US Army and its bosses, the contractors) which prizes, and profits from incompetence.
I would stay as far from him as possible, no matter what he bleats out to give Obama a hard time. Believe me, if Obama was attempting to make the Israelis pay a price for their intransigence, Petreaus would be screaming it’s the end of the world.
Please bear with the length of this comment. It is long because I am trying to set up background to make an argument for political corruption.
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I’m inclined to think this is serious. It is essentially a policy revolt.
Mark Perry: No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.”
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Mark Perry: But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command – or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus’s reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region’s most troublesome conflict.
Responsibility for US military operations across most of the planet is geographically divvied up amongst ‘Commands’, e.g. Central Command (CENTCOM), European Command (EUCOM), Southern Command, etc. The physical areas assigned to each are ostensibly assigned to encompass related regional political actors, e.g. European nations, so that responsibility for solving closely connected or linked problems is centralized, and the expertise of personnel assigned to each area is as broadly useful as possible.
Each ‘Command’ commander has fundamental responsibility for execution of US military policy, including combat operations, within his area-of-responsibility. This responsibility intrinsically has a political component. Command commanders are not just generals and admirals; they are political actors who wield absolutely ENORMOUS power. They must, and do, communicate with the political leadership of nations in their region.
Gen. Petraeus’ request for the West Bank and Gaza to be transferred to his command is an unmistakably clear assertion to senior political leadership, not just highest-level DoD like the Joint Chiefs of Staff (of which Admiral Mullen is the chair) but also the White House, that political processes within the Israeli-occupied Palestinian-Territories are fundamentally relevant to the successful completion of United States objectives within CENTCOM.
I think he is complaining that the assignment of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories to EUCOM is political gerrymandering. Look at a map of the Central Command area. What does Israel, where the fundamental political process of relevance to the United States is its ethnic cleansing and colonization of Palestinian land under the guise of permanent military occupation, have to do with the challenges that the US faces in Europe? Absolutely nothing. US ties with Israel, on the other hand, are obviously relevant to challenges we face the Middle East, i.e. CENTCOM, because both regional political leadership and ‘the street’ care about what is happening in Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
Why then are Israel and the OPT assigned to EUCOM? I submit that it is to keep responsibility for solution of problems the United States faces from our support of Israeli occupation out of the hands of those responsible for solution of problems we face in the larger Middle East.
How much time and effort is the commander of EUCOM going to spend on a problem peripheral to his main European concerns, especially one fraught with career-limiting possibilities? Commander CENTCOM (Petraeus), on the other hand, has incentive to tackle the issue of Israeli colonization. Americans are getting killed by the thousands in HIS area-of-responsibility, both major wars for which he is responsible are not going well, and most importantly (from a strategist’s point of view) US influence is waning everywhere in a region of CRITICAL US interest. We simply can’t do without oil, and pretending otherwise is madness.
Guess who will be blamed? Unlike commander EUCOM, Petraeus might actually do something to minimize the threat to US interests stemming from the Israel occupation, and therefore any American who puts Israeli interests before those of the United States will resist having Israel added to his purview.
I think it is obvious that Israel should be transferred to CENTCOM, especially since Syria,Jordan, and Lebanon are already there. We should be asking these questions:
correction:
…especially since Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon and Egypt …
I agree with you, Colin Murray, and that map makes it plainly obvious that Israel should be under CENTCOM.
Time to call the White House: 202-456-1111 or 1414.
Petreaus’ only interest is to expand and confuse and escalate, that’s all he is capable of, and that’s what he’ll do.
Don’t look to him for help. He saw a chance to take a shot at Obama, and that’s what he did.
If you look at a map of CENTCOM, you will find a hole in the middle, named Israel. The politics of moving Israel from CENTCOM to EUCOM must tell a strange tale. Shlomo Sand has pointed out that Jewish history as taught in Israel is more religion and myth unlike other history. The transfer of Israel out of the Middle East to Europe as discussed above tells us that there can also be Jewish geography.
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