Michael Tomasky is a leading mainstream political journalist who generally avoids discussing the Israel lobby or Israel’s profound influence over American policymaking. But today in a Daily Beast piece urging intervention in Syria, even he has to acknowledge the Israel factor; and note that Tomasky forcefully distinguishes between American and Israeli interests:
I should note that Israel sees things differently, taking a [pro-Assad] devil-we-know approach, and obviously Israel’s interests are going to be taken into account to some degree by any US administration. But the US has different interests here. Assad is indeed a threat to US security, albeit an indirect one, because of his alliance with Iran. Combining that with the humanitarian impulse will likely outweight Israel’s concerns.
So much for “no daylight” between Israel and the U.S. There’s daylight. The mainstream needs to talk about this issue. Now Tomasky, why is Iran a threat to U.S. security?
I’m not sure he’s accurate in assessing Israel’s position. Some Israelis (eg Caroline Glick, on Capitol Hill last year) were explicit in explaining that Israel preferred Assad overthrown. Others I’m not so sure. There is an Israeli stream of thought that would prefer fundamentalist chaos 0r Gaza type rule in Syria to a fairly secular-Iran aligned regime.
I think Israel would perfer to leave Assad in place. The US position will be determined more by the Saudi support for the rebels than by the Iranian support for the regime IMO. Someone should remind them what happened the last time they helped the Saudis arm Sunni “freedom fighters” against a secular regime.
Assumes Iran is a threat to U.S. security.
I suspect Israel is avoiding direct support of intervention in Syria, just the way it avoided openly supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Which says nothing about what Israel may be saying — and doing — behind the scenes.
Israel reportedly smuggling weapons to Syria through Iraqi Kurdistan: Syrian sources.
Whoa Glenn Greenwald hits another one out of the morals park
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/12/what_might_cause_another_911/singleton/
“Today’s defense of President Obama from Andrew Sullivan is devoted to refuting Conor Friedersdorf’s criticism of Obama’s drone program. Says Sullivan:
What frustrates me about Conor’s position – and Greenwald’s as well – is that it kind of assumes 9/11 didn’t happen or couldn’t happen again, and dismisses far too glibly the president’s actual responsibility as commander-in-chief to counter these acts of mass terror.
This is exactly backward. I absolutely believe that another 9/11 is possible. And the reason I believe it’s so possible is that people like Andrew Sullivan — and George Packer — have spent the last decade publicly cheering for American violence brought to the Muslim world, and they continue to do so (now more than ever under Obama). Far from believing that another 9/11 can’t happen, I’m amazed that it hasn’t already, and am quite confident that at some point it will. How could any rational person expect their government to spend a full decade (and counting) invading, droning, cluster-bombing, occupying, detaining without charges, and indiscriminately shooting huge numbers of innocent children, women and men in multiple countries and not have its victims and their compatriots be increasingly eager to return the violence?
Just consider what one single, isolated attack on American soil more than a decade ago did to Sullivan, Packer and company: the desire for violence which that one attack 11 years ago unleashed is seemingly boundless by time or intensity. Given the ongoing American quest for violence from that one-day attack, just imagine the impact which continuous attacks over the course of a full decade must have on those whom we’ve been invading, droning, cluster-bombing, occupying, detaining without charges, and indiscriminately shooting.”
I would appreciate if anyone could tell me, why is Syria and Iran a threat to the security of the USA?!
Iran did not attacked an other nation since centuries and has no intention of doing it now. We keep interferring in iranian affairs and on our urging Saddam Hussein waged a long war against them, with weapons, including chemical ones, supplied by us.
Syria was attacked and attacked again by Israel, israeli agents infiltrated all parts of their government and according to reliable sources, are now active to cause uprising to overthrow Assad.
We are the attackers and we complain about our security?