This is sick.
The Emergency Committee for Israel released a video yesterday calling for Obama to bomb Iran. “Talking isn’t working,” the ad says (and as Rob’t Wright points out, the ad lies in stating that Iran has enriched enough uranium to make five bombs, it doesn’t have that uranium). It’s pure election-year politics, trying to bring Jews to Romney’s side on the issue of supporting Israel.
Now J Street has struck back with the ad above, quoting Bill Kristol from a colloquy with J Street’s leader, Jeremy Ben-Ami, last month on the Upper West Side: “I’m happy to sit here and agree with President Obama to a considerable degree [on Iran]“.
Kudos to J Street for trying to stop a war on Iran. Dershowitz is attacking J Street for just this stance; and Dershowitz gets a meeting in the White House, not Jeremy Ben-Ami.
(Though I would note that the ultimate problem here is America’s support for Israel, at the urging of American Zionists; and J Street is part of that problem. The J Street ad concludes, “Don’t play politics with America and Israel’s security.” But this isn’t actually about America’s security, it’s about Israel’s perception of its security. Israel is not our country. The correct response to Kristol’s efforts to play politics with this issue is to actually politicize the issue, Should we be so supportive of Israel?)
In a crisis, everyone thinks their side can “win” if they come out ahead in the crisis. AIPAC thinks it will “win” something if it can press Obama to enter a war no-one other than AIPAC wants. Even if the USA loses big. The_Dersh seems to agree. He too wants to “win”.
Obama wants to “win” by winning the next election. I suppose he has some idea for turning such a “win” to good account, but unless he show us and the world what that turning is, his “win” (if it occur) will be nearly valueless.
J-Street must think it can “win” here by opposing AIPAC. Glad to see it. It is surely high time J-Street stood up for something generally beneficial. I suppose J-Street thinks it can “win” in the long run if it seems to win this fight in the short term.
If J Street were serious they’d run the following ad:
[images of Iraq war and modern Iran] Announcer (VO)
Remember how were told Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Well, it wasn’t true and America spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost over four thousand soldiers and saw tens of thousands of soldiers injured for life – not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who died. All based on lies.
Who lied us into that war? The same neocons attempting to lie us into another war – this time in Iran. Iran is no threat, just as Iraq was no threat. Iran is completely contained – surrounded by countless U.S. military bases. The Iranian regime is suffering under crippling economic sanctions that mostly hurt their people – and the Iranian people want their government to change.
The quest for war is a proxy effort by israel, to use the United States to achieve israel’s regional superpower goals. Don’t be lied to again by the Neocon Thirty
[ad concludes showing the faces of all the arch-zionist Fifth Columnist types: Kristol, Krauthammer, Adelson, Joe Lieberman, Dershowitz, Saban, etc etc]
Colin Powell was on Diana Reim PBS radio show the other day saying he has not guilt about convincing the American public to war on Iran because, he says, 16 separate American Intell agencies all said Iran had WMD. He adds that Curb Ball’s misinformation was not known (at least by him) at the time he made his presentation on TV as prelude to war. OTOH, there’s documented evidence German Intell specifically told CIA that there was evidence Curb Ball was not a credible source, and that after receiving this warning, the CIA refrained from going near Curb Ball again as they did not want to know anything that might weaken what Curb Ball had told them, especially about the alleged trucks loaded with poisonous WMD–at Powell’s presentation, he pointed to pictures of said trucks, which didn’t exist. Now Powell has come out, after Curb Ball has confessed he was telling lies and was surprised and horrified when he saw his lies being used to support and justify war on Iran, has come out demanding names as to who exactly kept evidence of such weakness and conflicting evidence out of the reports he read at his desk. Powell also told Diane he thinks it was a good idea to attack Iran for humanitarian reasons, to save the Iraq people from their tyrannical dictator. Too, he’s now an Obama fan.
Curb Ball music will not die or fade away. It will be sang by the Zionist controlled media to soothe the shame of the impotence of the many American stricken with guilt and after glow of the conscience .My question is this why on earth we go to the extreme length to the farthest reaches and the corners of possibilities provided by obscure figures of dubious origin with no education or knowledge and use that ignoble lies to wage war and get other nations ready to join the fray while dutifully ignore the assertions and the views of the educated,vetted,experienced,publicly known figures . It was not that there was no solid reliable data from reasonable well known expert sources encompassing a broad swath of different agencies and the countries who not only challenged the views of lone asylum seeking taxi driver languishing in Germany but proved every words uttered in MSM wrong. WE decided to choose and then blamed the suppliers of the lies and lamented the non existence of the contrary views and intelligence.
The Emergency Committee for Israel video is really sick, but I could see Obama using an equally warmongering video to glorify his drone war or his assassination list (maybe this one could have a Godfather theme). Possibly, Obama prefers leaking to the press as opposed to ads in order to save the media costs.
Also, defending Obama’s record on his Iran policy is a bit tacky. He is sold out to AIPAC/Israel and his only (bad) excuse is I have to do it to get re-elected. See the Robert Wright article in Phil’s first post today.
J Street loves easy targets that help the Democrats and Obama. Especially now that the occupation is off the Obama (and J Street) agenda.
Kuncinich wrote a letter dated June 14th, last, to Obama, co-signed by a handful of liberals and Ron Paul, telling POTUS that his signature drone attacks are actually creating more terrorists.
As you noted in the parathesis, the issue here isn’t America but the PR handling of Israel. J Street isn’t slamming ECI for warmongering. It’s slamming it because it believes the group can do better hasbara.
RE: “Kudos to J Street for trying to stop a war on Iran. Dershowitz is attacking J Street for just this stance; and Dershowitz gets a meeting in the White House, not Jeremy Ben-Ami.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: I have decided that come hell or high water I will not be voting for Obama this November. I’m tired of being a battered
wifevoter!Jill Stein for President – link to jillstein.org
P.S. RE: “But this isn’t actually about America’s security, it’s about Israel’s perception of its security.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: It is not about Israel’s perception of its “security”; it is about Iran being a threat to Israel’s regional dominance!
Israel’s POV always conflates maintaining and increasing regional hegemony and perceptions of its security. Second strike capability is best if Israel has all the land from the river to the sea. Plus, the bible says all the land is Israel’s.
J Street’s position on Iran doesn’t go far enough. It opposes war but still supports “crippling sanctions” as opposed to serious diplomacy that might resolve the Iranian nuclear issue.
Both US foreign policy and Israeli foreign policy see Iran as the biggest danger in the ME precisely because it’s the most independent from both US & Israel.