The other night on CSpan, I watched Rachel Maddow give a lecture at Mount Holyoke College about her foreign policy book Drift. The speech was amusing, and her condemnation of Obama’s use of drones was excellent, as was her sympathy for military families who have borne the brunt of these wars inside the U.S. But the speech was singularly lacking in analysis. Why are we mired in Middle Eastern wars? Maddow’s analysis seems to be, That’s just us. We’ve got a military establishment. They do this stuff. They can’t be stopped. They build drones and like to fly ’em.
The same aphasia is at work in Ari Berman’s piece on Romney’s neoconservative braintrust in the Nation. It’s a well-reported piece on the prevalence of neoconservatives in the Republican Party. And the Nation knows that neocon is now a curseword. It’s on the cover of the magazine in huge letters.
Americans don’t want to be stuck in these wars, Berman shows, citing polls. But why do the neocons have power? Berman draws a blank. It’s because of a vacuum in the Republican establishment. Or a “dangerously myopic” black and white worldview. “A cold war prism,” he says, quoting Joseph Biden. Though in a parentheses, Berman says that there is a domestic logic to Romney’s hires– “courting conservative elements of the Jewish vote.” As if the power Sheldon Adelson wields is his ability to waddle into a polling place in Nevada.
I can justly be accused of being a conspiracy theorist because I believe in the Israel lobby theory. I find it a more compelling conspiracy than the Chomskyan conspiracy, a Military Industrial Complex of Lockheed and Grumman and Halliburton that got us into Iraq. Certainly my theory has an explanation of the rise and influence of the neocons. They don’t have a class interest but an ideological-religious one. Like evangelical Christians who jam buses to vote on abortion, they don’t care about financial self-interest. They are rightwing Zionists. As I observed here — when Robert Siegel on NPR said it was anti-semitic to mention the Jewishness of the neocons– neoconservatism came out of the rightwing Jewish community. I quoted 7 Jewish writers on this point, including Dershowitz: “the recent neo-conservative movement in America has also been dominated by Jews.”
Neoconservatism is dominated by rightwing Jews because they are ultra-Zionists who believe in Israel’s militarism and have sought to import that ideology to the U.S. Part of their success was that they did their intellectual work. Over 25 years they elaborated a powerful idea about the way the world worked, with Zionist pedigree, and when the U.S. had a crisis, our leaders reached for those (misguided) ideas. As Francis Fukuyama has said about the neoconservatives’ ideological persuasion: “there was a very coherent set of strategic ideas that have come out of Israel’s experience dealing with the Arabs and the world community, having to do with threat perception, preemption, the relative balance of carrots and sticks to be used in dealing with the Arabs, the United Nations, and the like…”
Walt and Mearsheimer addressed this intellectual investment in The Israel Lobby when they said the “special relationship” had a hammerlock on US policy in the Middle East. Scott McConnell expressed it at the Middle East Policy Council:
The… special relationship [with Israel]… is at bottom a transmission belt, conveying Israeli ideas on how the United States should conduct itself in a contested and volatile part of the world. To a great extent, a receptive American political class now views the Middle East and their country’s role in it through Israel’s eyes.
Maybe McConnell is wrong. Maybe Walt and Mearsheimer and Fukuyama and I are wrong. But at least we are presenting a coherent analysis that seeks to explain the fact that the same thinktank-sponsored Americans who advised Netanyahu to make a “clean break” with the peace process 16 years ago, and who succeeded in that initiative, and who urged that the U.S. to invade Iraq, an initiative also crowned with success, and who are now pushing a war with Iran out of concern for Israel’s security, are still regnant in the American system. (And why are they regnant? Because of money, because of the usual springs of political power in this country– an issue that the conventional left is afraid to broach because it touches on uncomfortable issues, like the prevalence of conservative Jewish donors in our political system).
You can’t go forward without an analysis. As long as the mainstream left is being purposely vague about the causes of the neoconservative investment, it will be powerless to stop it.
“Why are we mired in Middle Eastern wars? Maddow’s analysis seems to be, That’s just us. We’ve got a military establishment. They do this stuff. They can’t be stopped. They build drones and like to fly ’em.” Rachel Maddow is a well paid cog in the neocons wheel of misinformation. She has persistently repeated false claims about Iran. She has persistently avoided directly reporting about the the Israeli Palestinian issue honestly if at all. Oops must admit that she did have former President Jimmy Carter on ONCE to discuss the issue which was a big step for her. He of course stated facts that she will not go near. Rachel is no different than any other so called liberal MSM host or congress person who is moderate to liberal on health care, education, labor but turn hard right on Iran, the I/P conflict etc.
Phil: better get on board Chomsky’s analysis. USA’s “national interest” is determined by a CONVERGENCE of interests among Americans ruling class (which I call the “BIGs”: BIG-OIL, BIG-BANKS, BIG-PHARMA, BIG-ARMS (makers of arms), BIG-WAR (users, wasters, of arms), BIG-ZION, all the big international business such as the banana companies and oil companies and mining companies that depend on repeated use of USA’s imperialist military power to assure favorable (compliant) governments around the world for American corporations (and, nowadays, international corporations). This imperialism is quite old and its creation much predates WWII. Think of the Indian clearance project, the Mexican war whereby the USA got Tejas (later Texas), the Spanish-American war whereby the USA got Philippines and Puerto Rico, all before 1900. When Eisenhower warned against the Military-Indistrial-Complex, he was not confused but describing a growing reality. It had nothing to do with Israel (and Ike punished Israel w.r.t. Suez in 1956, before BIG-ZION found its way to a seat at the table of the BIGs).
Some of the earliest folks to focus on the large percentage of right wing radical Jews involved in the neocon movement was Jason Vest in the Nation in 2002:
The Men From JINSA and CSP | The Nationwww.thenation.com/article/men-jinsa-and-csp
“Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d’être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.
Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they’ve managed to weave a number of issues–support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general–into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core.
On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war–not just with Iraq, but “total war,” as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, “regime change” by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents–be it Colin Powell’s State Department, the CIA or career military officers–is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East–a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.”
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And Lt Col Karen Kwiatowski wrote about this group in the Pentagon that she watched first hand in “The New Pentagon Papers”:
The new Pentagon papers – Iraq war – Salon.comwww.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp/Cached
Mar 10, 2004
“From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.
I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.
While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account. ”
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Former Cia analyst Katheen and Bill Christison have written a fair amount about the neoconservatives:
Bush’s Dual Loyalties » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the …www.counterpunch.org/2002/12/13/bush-s-dual-loyalties/
“A Rose By Another Other Name The Bush Administration’s Dual Loyalties
Bush’s Dual Loyalties
by KATHLEEN And BILL CHRISTISON Former CIA Political Analysts
Since the long-forgotten days when the State Department’s Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, U.S. policy on Israel and the Arab world has increasingly become the purview of officials well known for tilting toward Israel. From the 1920s roughly to 1990, Arabists, who had a personal history and an educational background in the Arab world and were accused by supporters of Israel of being totally biased toward Arab interests, held sway at the State Department and, despite having limited power in the policymaking circles of any administration, helped maintain some semblance of U.S. balance by keeping policy from tipping over totally toward Israel. But Arabists have been steadily replaced by their exact opposites, what some observers are calling Israelists, and policymaking circles throughout government now no longer even make a pretense of exhibiting balance between Israeli and Arab, particularly Palestinian, interests.
In the Clinton administration, the three most senior State Department officials dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli peace process were all partisans of Israel to one degree or another. All had lived at least for brief periods in Israel and maintained ties with Israel while in office, occasionally vacationing there. One of these officials had worked both as a pro-Israel lobbyist and as director of a pro-Israel think tank in Washington before taking a position in the Clinton administration from which he helped make policy on Palestinian-Israeli issues. Another has headed the pro-Israel think tank since leaving government.”
Stephen Green wrote an important piece about the history of this group of individuals in 2004:
Feb 28-Mar 01, 2004
Two Flags
Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration
by STEPHEN GREEN
Since 9-11, a small group of “neo-conservatives” in the Administration have effectively gutted–they would say reformed–traditional American foreign and security policy. Notable features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle instruments and institutions of international law….all in the cause of fighting terrorism and promoting homeland security.
Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons’ past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration’s new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con campaign against the other two countries which constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli military hegemony in the region–Iran and Syria.
Have the neo-conservatives–many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President–had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies?”
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Congressman Findlay, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, former US National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, fomer President Jimmy Carter, former Cia analyst Ray McGovern, former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit Micheal Scheuer and many others have written and spoken about the issue of a small radical right wing group of individuals and a disproportionate amount of this group being Jewish manipulating US foreign policy in a way that is ultimately destructive to US national security
Phil wrote:
might have a cart-horse problem here. The Netanyahus have been the vanguard of Israeli expansionism, militarism, supremecism, and the GWOT.
-Benzion Netanyahu was Jabotinsky’s acolyte, doing Jabotinsky’s footwork in NYC in run-up to WWII. In other words, he’s been involved in embroiling the US government & military in the zionist project since at least early 1930s.
-1979 Jerusalem Conference (book published 1982] International Terrorism, Challenge and Response
-1986 Terrorism: How the West Can Win
on the “expert” patina assumed by these books and numerous re-publications of them, Benj. Netanyahu has been lionized by U.S. Congress for over 25 years. In 2002, even as George Bush was speaking at the United Nations telling that body he planned to wage war on Iraq, Netanyahu was telling a Congressional committee chaired by Dan Burton that “Iraq was the keystone of the ‘terror network;’ Iran was a major element of the ‘terror network.’ Iraq should be taken down first and Iran would follow on its own, seeing the writing on the wall. Netanyahu urged Burton’s committee to endorse Bush in his proposal to wage war on Iraq.
A few days ago Trita Parsi wrote an article using the word “Bibism” in the title. imo it’s astute to focus on the Netanyahu Crime Family — AND the neocons — and toss all matter of ammunition at them. An Alternative to Bibism: What Would Israel Gain?
By ceding that criticism of occupation and ethnic cleansing by Israel can be interpreted as anti-Semitic, these would be analysts/critics, by default, silently assent to the crime against Palestinians. The criticsm of neo-con thinking by Madow, Berman, and the like, is shallow and vacuous because they choose to practice self-censorship.