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January 04, 2007

"Zionism" the Real Motive Behind Troop Surge?

Paul Craig Roberts strikes out at Bush again in his latest article, saying the "ignorant and moronic" President Bush should be impeached for putting the "Israeli Zionist settlers" and the military industrial complex ahead of what is best for America. Roberts says that Bush's plan to increase troops in Iraq is really the work of Jack Keane and Frederic W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the "second most important Israeli lobby in Washington after AIPAC."

Knowledgeable people regard the Keane/Kagan plan as a proposal designed to continue for a while longer the blood profits of the US military-industrial complex and to advance Israel's interests by spreading Sunni-Shi'ite conflict throughout the Middle East.

The neoconservatives' original plan was to give Israel hegemony in the Middle East by using the US military to overthrow Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The failure of US forces to subdue Iraq has led to a new neoconservative plan to give Israel supremacy by spreading sectarian conflict among Muslims throughout the region. No Arab state would be stable, and Israel could proceed with its seizure of Palestine.

Roberts then asks whether Congress will move to stop the President. All things considered, it may very well not. As the Jerusalem Post points out today, a record number of Jewish members will enter Congress today and they will be taking up "unparalleled positions of power" on "committees related to Israel." (For the record, I personally do not buy the notion that Jew = Zionist.)

Six new Jewish legislators will be joining 37 familiar faces as the 110th Congress convenes, making the total the highest-ever, according to Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC.

"It's unprecedented that there have been so many [Jews] in so many positions of leadership in both houses," Bloomfield said, using a Jewish simile for how that fact will affect support for Israel: Like chicken soup, it won't hurt.

Other political analysts went further, saying that congressional backing of Israel would remain at least as strong it has been, if not stronger.

The issue of American support for Israeli interests, and whether that is a good thing for America, is one that is increasingly being discussed, despite the long-standing taboo on criticism of Israel in the United States – a taboo which former President Jimmy Carter broke recently in his new book. A provocative article on Jews and American policy has this to say:

This conflation of Jewish interests with American interests is nowhere more stark than in present American foreign policy. If ever an image was reminiscent of a Jewish world conspiracy, the spectacle of the Jewish neo-cons gathered around the current presidency and directing policy in the Middle East, this must be it. But we are told that the fact that the Jewish neo-cons, many with links with right wing political groups within Israel, are in the forefront of urging a pro-Israel policy, is but a coincidence, and any suggestion that these figures might be influenced by their Jewishness and their links with Israel is immediately marginalised as reviving old anti-Semitic myths about Jewish dual loyalty. The idea that American intervention in Iraq, the one viable military counterweight to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and therefore an inspiration to Arab and Palestinian resistance, primarily serves Israeli rather than American interests has also been consigned to the nether world of mediaeval anti-Semitic myth. The suggestion that those Jews around the president act from motives other than those to promote the interests of all Americans is just anti-Semitic raving. And maybe they're right. Perhaps those who promote Jewish interests are in fact promoting American interests because, for now at least, they appear to be one and the same.

The article addresses the reason for the taboo against speaking up on the concerns some have about the Jewish influence in American foreign policy:

[W]hy should … Jews who choose to combine their prayers and their politics be immune while at prayer from our legitimate protests at their politics? And for those few Jews who are really prepared to stand up and be counted for their solidarity with Palestinians, why can we not still give to them due honour and regard as we did to those few Americans who opposed American imperialism and those white South Africans who opposed apartheid?

The answer is that we are frightened. Even knowing that Jews are responsible and should be held accountable, still we are frightened. We are frightened because criticism of Jews with its woeful history of violence and discrimination seems just too dangerous a position to take - it may open the flood-gates to a burst of Jew hatred. We are frightened that if we were to discuss the role of Jews in this conflict and in other areas and begin to hold Jews accountable, we might be labeled anti-Semites and lose support. And, perhaps most of all, we are frightened of the conflicted inner passions that confound us all whenever we come to look at these things.

I have to agree that it is fear that keeps us silent on these issues. I do not have any concerns whatsoever about Jewish people participating fully in our government or the media. But their biases, like everyone else's, must be recognized, particularly when the impacts on American foreign policy may lead us to further stir up tensions in the Middle East. Excellent further reading on this topic includes Syndey Blumenthal's piece in Salon from last August entitled, "The Neocons' Next War."

Posted by Becky at January 4, 2007 10:31 AM