A Guide to Middle Eastern Terror Groups ;-)

U.S. Will Take Action In Syria Regardless of Support From Allies or U.N.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013
by Madison Ruppert
Activist Post

In a statement that brings to memory the attack on Iraq, the United States said that it will take action against Syria even if allies and the United Nations do not support the operation.

The attack would be a response to alleged chemical weapons use. Despite the lack of published findings by the UN investigators, Western nations have been calling for a response to the alleged attack and one report claimed that U.S., Israeli and Jordanian commandos are already on the ground in Syria.

Today the Syrian government called for an immediate UN investigation into three new alleged attacks, reportedly carried out by the rebels.

Yet the United States’ rhetoric has become increasingly bellicose today, with the Associated Press reporting that the U.S. will simply ignore the backing – or lack thereof – of the UN and allied nations.

Note: The Washington Post changed the AP story entirely. Here is the original version posted on another site.

On Wednesday, Britain proposed a draft resolution that would authorize a military operation against Syria but that effort was stymied by the continued opposition of Russia.

The Associated Press rightly notes that if the draft resolution was put to a vote, it “would almost certainly be vetoed by Russia and China, which have blocked past attempts to sanction President Bashar Assad’s regime.”

Indeed, Russia and China have presented the most significant obstacle to Western intervention in Syria for quite some time now.

Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman for the State Department, said that the U.S. cannot be delayed in responding to the alleged attack by Russia’s opposition in the United Nations.

Russia maintained that a military strike on Syria without the approval of the UN Security Council would be a “crude violation” of international law, something which doesn’t seem to bother the U.S.

In the United States, “No War With Syria” rallies are scheduled for Saturday, August 31 in cities across the United States.

“The movement in no way support the actions of the Assad regime, but we recognize that US intervention will instigate more violence and suffering in Syria,” organizer Nick Bernabe said in a statement.

“As the U.S. is already hurting from a recession and perpetual wars, becoming involved in Syria will only create further destabilization in the Middle East and strip the people of the United States of desperately needed resources,” he added.

Opposition has also been voiced by former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who said that a strike on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces would mean the U.S. was supporting al-Qaeda.

War Tax at the Gas Pump

Sanctions, Threats and Speculators

by JEFF KLEIN


It’s hard to miss the higher cost of gas every time we fill up our cars these days, but the News Media doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why. There isn’t any mystery, though, if you read the financial press and oil industry sources: We’re paying extra for gas because of rising tensions in the Middle East and especially the scare over a possible US or Israeli attack on Iran. In effect, we’re paying a “war tax” at the gas pump, and the cost will only get higher unless we put aside the talk of war and get down to serious diplomacy to settle the differences in the region.

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal had to say recently, under the headline Oil Rise Imperils Budding Recovery:

Rising oil prices are emerging once again as a threat to the U.S. economic recovery just as it appears to be gaining momentum. Oil prices have climbed sharply in recent weeks as mounting tension with Iran has raised the threat of a disruption in global supplies. On Wednesday, oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose $1.06 to $101.80 a barrel on reports that Iran had cut off sales to six European countries in response to the European Union’s newly stepped-up sanctions.

The world market price for oil is headed upward of $110 a barrel, which could translate into $4 gasoline before too long. If an actual war breaks out, we could soon be remembering the current price at the pump as “cheap gas”.

But what about “Drill Baby Drill” to lower the price of gas – as the Republicans demand? Political rhetoric aside, the reality is that there is a world market price for petroleum which cannot be significantly lowered by marginal increases in US supply. International oil prices are rising even as US oil production has increased during the past decade. Do you think US suppliers are going to sell us domestically-produced oil at a discount lower than the world market price? Keep dreaming. That’s just not the way the oil companies do business.

For example, after the US Arctic oil fields were developed and the TransAlaska pipeline came into service – despite serious environmental objections – large amounts of Alaskan oil were exported rather than sold in the lower 48 states. Between 1996 and 2004 almost a 100 million barrels of Alaska crude were shipped to Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China. Direct export of North Slope oil was eventually banned by Congress, but refined petroleum products – gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel – continue to be shipped abroad from refineries in Alaska and the lower 48. Today Gulf Coast refineries find it more profitable to sell gasoline to Latin America instead of shipping it to the East Coast, where the law would require them to use US-flagged tankers with American crews. The US is now a net exporter of refined petroleum products, even as the rising price of gas continues to put a strain on struggling families with no alternative means of transportation.

But an even higher war tax on gas is not inevitable. Diplomacy with Iran could still diffuse the conflict before the unthinkable happens. Despite all the alarmist and warmongering rhetoric, especially from Republican presidential candidates, we are not facing an imminent nuclear threat from Iran. US intelligence agencies are unanimous in judging that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program at this time. In fact, the Iranians – like all the other countries in the Middle East except Israel – have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and they have the right under its safeguards to produce low-enriched uranium for power plants and medical research. All of Iran’s nuclear materials are under real-time inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The only nuclear weapons in the Middle East right now are the hundreds of warheads belonging to the US and Israel.

Despite this reality – and in the face of opinion polls showing Americans prefer a diplomatic solution to the Iran issue rather than a military conflict – some politicians seem determined to drive us into yet another Middle East war. Ironically, the very same politicians who are trying to make a partisan issue out of the price of gas are the ones who are pressing for policies to sharpen the regional tensions that have caused them to rise.

After the bitter experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, we should have learned enough to demand a peaceful way out of this conflict. If we fail, a new war could have unpredictable and catastrophic results throughout the region. Of course, in that case, $5 gas might be the least of our problems.

United States as a Global Power: New World Disorder

Thursday, December 29, 2011 by The Guardian/UK
The US is struggling with a paradox: while its military power retains global reach, its role as world leader is gradually ending
The Guardian Editorial 

The time has long since past when it became fashionable to talk about a new world order. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided an opportunity to fashion one. But instead of using that opportunity to create a new security architecture in Europe, Nato expanded eastwards as the military anchor for democracy promotion. Not content to have seen off one global military competitor in the Soviet Union, the western military industrial complex and the think-tanks they funded scurried around for a worthy replacement. When 11 September happened, they thought they were in business again. For a brief moment, al-Qaida seemed to fulfil some of the characteristics of communism: it could pop up anywhere in the world; it was an existential enemy, driven ideologically and uncontainable through negotiation; and it was potentially voluminous. Neither the doctrines of the pre-emptive strike, nor attacking a foreign country abroad to ensure security at home, were new. Swap the domino theory of the Vietnam era for the crescent of crisis of the Bush and Obama eras, and you had the same formula for a foe that hopscotched across the globe.


But here's the curious thing. Al-Qaida failed, not by being bombed out of the tribal areas of Pakistan or by losing its video-hugging leader. It failed as an ideological alternative, in its own terms and for its own people. It failed in Egypt, the country that mattered most to its chief thinker, the Egyptian-born doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri. When the opportunity arose for millions of Muslims to shed their brutal Arab yoke (this was supposed to be the fourth phase in the construction of the Caliphate, to be accompanied by physical attacks against oil suppliers and cyber ones on the US economy), nothing of the sort happened. Islam is indeed winning the day, but it is political rather than military. It seeks alliances with the apostate and says it is committed to democratic partnership and the rule of law.


Al-Qaida's failure was all the more significant because the western response, the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, also failed. Not because the enemy was especially daunting, but because the mission was impossible to start with. Mission creep started with democracy promotion, continued as state-building, and ended with withdrawal at any cost, by the appointed date. The quality of life in the country US combat troops left behind – most likely one that in Iraq will break up into a loose federation on sectarian lines – became less important than the fact of departure itself. Military ceremonies proclaiming victory in the war in Iraq had as much sense of reality as Kim Jong-il's funeral. This is the next feature of the world we live in. It is an age of the self-defeating intervention. The quests through military means to build stable states out of a dictatorship in Iraq or a failed state in Afghanistan did not and are not failing at the hands of a conventional enemy. They implode. They self-destruct.


Military overreach and serial economic crises have bequeathed us a generation of small leaders who battle with events that outsize them. They have stopped trying to fashion them, but appeal instead to a defensive desire. Protectionism not internationalism rules the day. The Middle East has been transformed from a zone of allies to one in which Washington has been reduced to the role of spectator. It is now largely a taker of Middle Eastern policy, not one of its makers. There are other parts of the globe where US power projection finds natural allies, such as the Pacific, where China's rise is feared. So the paradox is that while US military power retains global reach (it is working on supersonic cruise missiles, and long-range drones) its stewardship as world leader, as a generator of the next big idea, is gradually ending. There may come a time when international institutions are rebuilt to fill this vacuum. But that time is not yet. Until then, a new world disorder would be nearer the mark.

Gingrich Calls Palestinians 'Invented' People

Saturday, December 10, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English

Republican presidential hopeful defends Israel and says Palestinians are Arabs who "had a chance to go many places".

Republican White House hopeful Newt Gingrich has stirred controversy by calling the Palestinians an "invented" people who could have chosen to live elsewhere.

Gingrich mocked the US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling it 'out of touch with reality'.

The former House of Representatives speaker, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential race, made the remarks in an interview with the US Jewish Channel broadcaster released on Friday.

Asked whether he considers himself a Zionist, he answered: "I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a state ... Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire" until the early 20th century, "I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community.

"And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic."

Most historians mark the start of Palestinian Arab nationalist sentiment in 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule.

Israel, founded amid the 1948 Arab-Israel war, took shape along the lines of a 1947 UN plan for ethnic partition of the then-British ruled territory of Palestine which Arabs rejected.

More than 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their lands by Zionist armed groups in 1948, in an episode Palestinians refer to as the Nakba or "catastrophe".


'Irrational hostility'Gingrich's comments drew a swift rebuke from a spokesman for the American Task Force on Palestine, Hussein Ibish, who said:

"The idea that Palestinians are 'an invented people' while Israelis somehow are not is historically indefensible and inaccurate.

"Such statements seem to merely reflect deep historical ignorance and an irrational hostility towards Palestinian identity and nationalism."

Sabri Saidam, adviser to the Palestinian president, told Al Jazeera, "This is a manifestation of extreme racism and this is a reflection of where America stands sad, when Palestinians don't get their rights...this is sad and America should respond with a firm reaction to such comments that, if let go, more of which will come our way." 

"Let me ask Newt Gingrich if he would ever entertain the thought of addressing Indian Americans by saying that they never existed, that they were the invention of a separate nation, would that be tolerated?"

"Let's also reverse the statement; let's put ourselves in "the shoe of Jews who are listening now. Would they ever accept such statements being made about them?"

Saidam said, "I think it's time that America rejects such statements and closes the door to such horrendous and unacceptable statements."

Gingrich also sharply criticised US President Barack Obama's approach to Middle East diplomacy, saying that it was "so out of touch with reality that it would be like taking your child to the zoo and explaining that a lion was a bunny rabbit."

He said Obama's effort to treat the Palestinians the same as the Israelis is actually "favouring the terrorists".

"If I'm even-handed between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day, that's not even-handed, that's favouring the terrorists," he said.

He also said the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, share an "enormous desire to destroy Israel".

The Palestinian Authority, which rules the occupied West Bank, formally recognises Israel's right to exist.

President Mahmoud Abbas has long forsworn violence against Israel as a means to secure an independent state, pinning his hopes first on negotiations and more recently on a unilateral bid for statehood via the UN.

Gingrich, along with other Republican candidates, are seeking to attract Jewish in the US support by vowing to bolster Washington's ties with Israel if elected.

He declared his world view was "pretty close" to that of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and vowed to take "a much more tougher-minded, and much more honest approach to the Middle East" if elected.

Is America Coming to Its Senses?

The Ebbing of War Fever
By ANDREW BACEVICH

At periodic intervals, the American body politic has shown a marked susceptibility to messianic fevers. Whenever an especially acute attack occurs, a sort of delirium ensues, manifesting itself in delusions of grandeur and demented behavior. 

By the time the condition passes and a semblance of health is restored, recollection of what occurred during the illness tends to be hazy. What happened? How'd we get here? Most Americans prefer not to know. No sense dwelling on what's behind us. Feeling much better now! Thanks!

Gripped by such a fever in 1898, Americans evinced an irrepressible impulse to liberate oppressed Cubans. By the time they'd returned to their senses, having acquired various parcels of real estate between Puerto Rico and the Philippines, no one could quite explain what had happened or why. (The Cubans meanwhile had merely exchanged one set of overseers for another.)

In 1917, the fever suddenly returned. Amid wild ravings about waging a war to end war, Americans lurched off to France. This time the affliction passed quickly, although the course of treatment proved painful: confinement to the charnel house of the Western Front, followed by bitter medicine administered at Versailles.

The 1960s brought another bout (and so yet more disappointment). An overwhelming urge to pay any price, bear any burden landed Americans in Vietnam. The fall of Saigon in 1975 seemed, for a brief interval, to inoculate the body politic against any further recurrence. Yet the salutary effects of this "Vietnam syndrome" proved fleeting. By the time the Cold War ended, Americans were running another temperature, their self-regard reaching impressive new heights. Out of Washington came all sorts of embarrassing gibberish about permanent global supremacy and history's purpose finding fulfillment in the American way of life.

Give Me Fever

Then came 9/11 and the fever simply soared off the charts. The messiah-nation was really pissed and was going to fix things once and for all.

Nearly 10 years have passed since Washington set out to redeem the Greater Middle East. The crusades have not gone especially well. In fact, in the pursuit of its saving mission, the American messiah has pretty much worn itself out.

Today, the post-9/11 fever finally shows signs of abating. The evidence is partial and preliminary. The sickness has by no means passed. Oddly, it lingers most strongly in the Obama White House, of all places, where a keenness to express American ideals by dropping bombs seems strangely undiminished.

Yet despite the urges of some in the Obama administration, after nearly a decade of self-destructive flailing about, American recovery has become a distinct possibility. Here's some of the evidence:

In Washington, it's no longer considered a sin to question American omnipotence. Take the case of Robert Gates. Along with restoring a modicum of competence and accountability to the Pentagon, the Gates legacy is likely to be found in his willingness -- however belated -- to acknowledge the limits of American power.

That the United States should avoid wars except when absolutely necessary no longer connotes incipient isolationism. It is once again a sign of common sense, with Gates a leading promoter. Modesty is becoming respectable.

The Gates Doctrine

No one can charge Gates with being an isolationist or a national security wimp. Neither is he a "declinist." So when he says anyone proposing another major land war in the Greater Middle East should "have his head examined" -- citing the authority of Douglas MacArthur, no less -- people take notice. Or more recently there was this: "I've got a military that's exhausted," Gates remarked, in one of those statements of the obvious too seldom heard from on high. "Let's just finish the wars we're in and keep focused on that instead of signing up for other wars of choice." Someone should etch that into the outer walls of the Pentagon's E-ring.

A half-dozen years ago, "wars of choice" were all the rage in Washington. No more. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Or consider the officer corps. There is no "military mind," but there are plenty of minds in the military and some numbers of them are changing.

Evidence suggests that the officer corps itself is rethinking the role of military power. Consider, for example, "Mr. Y," author of A National Strategic Narrative, published this spring to considerable acclaim by the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. The actual authors of this report are two military professionals, one a navy captain, the other a Marine colonel.

What you won't find in this document are jingoism, braggadocio, chest-thumping, and calls for a bigger military budget. If there's an overarching theme, it's pragmatism. Rather than the United States imposing its will on the world, the authors want more attention paid to the investment needed to rebuild at home.

The world is too big and complicated for any one nation to call the shots, they insist. The effort to do so is self-defeating. "As Americans," Mr. Y writes, "we needn't seek the world's friendship or proselytize the virtues of our society. Neither do we seek to bully, intimidate, cajole, or persuade others to accept our unique values or to share our national objectives. Rather, we will let others draw their own conclusions based upon our actions… We will pursue our national interests and let others pursue theirs..."

You might dismiss this as the idiosyncratic musing of two officers who have spent too much time having their brains baked in the Iraqi or Afghan sun. I don't. What convinces me otherwise is the positive email traffic that my own musings about the misuse and abuse of American power elicit weekly from serving officers. It's no scientific sample, but the captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels I hear from broadly agree with Mr. Y. They've had a bellyful of twenty-first-century American war and are open to a real debate over how to overhaul the nation's basic approach to national security.

Intelligence Where You Least Expect It

And finally, by gum, there is the United States Congress. Just when that body appeared to have entered a permanent vegetative state, a flickering of intelligent life has made its reappearance. Perhaps more remarkably still, the signs are evident on both sides of the aisle as Democrats and Republicans alike -- albeit for different reasons -- are raising serious questions about the nation's propensity for multiple, open-ended wars.

Some members cite concerns for the Constitution and the abuse of executive power. Others worry about the price tag. With Osama bin Laden out of the picture, still others insist that it's time to rethink strategic priorities. No doubt partisan calculation or personal ambition figures alongside matters of principle. They are, after all, politicians.

Given what polls indicate is a growing public unhappiness over the Afghan War, speaking out against that war these days doesn't exactly require political courage. Still, the possibility of our legislators reasserting a role in deciding whether or not a war actually serves the national interest -- rather than simply rubberstamping appropriations and slinking away -- now presents itself. God bless the United States Congress.

Granted, the case presented here falls well short of being conclusive. To judge by his announcement of a barely-more-than-symbolic troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Obama himself seems uncertain of where he stands. And clogging the corridors of power or the think tanks and lobbying arenas that surround them are plenty of folks still hankering to have a go at Syria or Iran.

At the first signs of self-restraint, you can always count on the likes of Senator John McCain or the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal to decry (in McCain's words) an "isolationist-withdrawal-lack-of-knowledge-of-history attitude" hell-bent on pulling up the drawbridge and having Americans turn their backs on the world. In such quarters, fever is a permanent condition and it's always 104 and rising. Yet it is a measure of just how quickly things are changing that McCain himself, once deemed a source of straight talk, now comes across as a mere crank.

In this way, nearly a decade after our most recent descent into madness, does the possibility of recovery finally beckon.

If Joblessness & Hopelessness Undermine Democracy in the Middle East, What About Here at Home?

Saturday, May 28, 2011 by This Can't Be Happening
Jarring Disconnect
by Dave Lindorff

In his latest speeches on the Middle East, President Obama, both at the State Department and at the G8 meeting in France, has pledged billions of dollars in economic aid to Middle Eastern countries, drawing a direct connection between the unrest and demonstrations that brought down the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, and the joblessness and hopelessness felt by the young people in those two countries.

His adviser on international economics, David Lipton, has been more specific, saying that, “We believe that these two pillars go hand in hand. Without economic modernization, it will be hard for governments trying to democratize to show people that democracy delivers.”

Unemployment in Egypt among young men and women is about 30%. In Tunisia, it is over 40%. The White House claims that with figures like that, the future for democracy in those countries is tenuous.

But wait a minute. What about the US? Unemployment and underemployment here is still up around 20% overall, and it is much higher among young people. Black youth unemployment fell so far in 2011 to an official rate of 44% from 50% last year (because so many young workers just gave up trying to find work)! Among Latino youth, the official unemployment rate is stuck at around 30%. Overall, youth unemployment, according to the official Labor Department figures, is 20%, but remember, the official rate does not count those who are working part time who want full-time work, and does not count those who have given up looking for work. Among young people, it may be that many who work part-time (those who live at home or who are in school or college) actually are not looking for full-time work, so that upward adjustment may not be as great as for older workers, but at the same time, there are certainly more young people who give up looking for jobs than is the case with older workers who have families to support. In any event, it is clear that all these youth unemployment figures are actually too low by a significant amount.

If the official rate of unemployment for all Americans of 9% is actually less than half of the actual rate of 20%, then even if we took a conservative estimate, simply eliminating the adjustment of those working part-time who want full-time work from the youth unemployment figure, and just keeping the adjustment for those who have dropped out of the labor force (stopped looking for work) because it is fruitless, we would still see actual unemployment figures for young people in the US at staggering Egypt-like levels: 30% for all young people, 45% for young Latinos, and as high as 66% for black youth!

So why is the president so concerned about providing economic support to boost jobs in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, in order to “support democracy,” while in here in the US, he has basically thrown in the towel on job creation efforts, and is just talking about cutting the deficit--a Republican theme?

Cutting the deficit, even as economists are increasingly warning that the so-called “recovery” is sputtering, is a recipe for even worse unemployment.

The answer can be found by looking at the way the young have reacted to joblessness in Egypt and Tunisia on the one hand, and in the US on the other.

In Egypt and Tunisia, they took to the streets and stood down police and soldiers, ultimately bringing down their governments.

Here in the US, young people, like their parents, are largely quiescent. Their reaction to the frustrations of joblessness tend to be either self-destructive (drugs and alcohol) or anti-social (gang activity or crime).


If they were to band together and take over city squares to demand action by government to give them jobs, to provide them with access to college funding, etc., they would get the same kind of attention and help from local and state governments and from the White House and Congress that Egyptian and Tunisian youth are getting from the G8 countries.

Sure, they’d have to face down police armed with tear gas and batons, just like their compatriots in Tunisia and Egypt had to do, but once aroused, motivated and organized, young people have the stamina and courage to do that.


What is lacking is any real effort to organize these frustrated and angry young people, and to get them out into the street. The traditional groups that would have done this in the past--the labor movement, civil rights organizations, and political groups on the left--have been somehow neutered. Their focus, such as it is, is on now on elections, on recall campaigns, and on the coming 2012 presidential contest. It is not on organizing unemployed young people.

Expecting the White House to act on this crisis of long-term joblessness and diminished expectations for the future among young workers is foolish. The Obama administration knows what the problem is. It just doesn’t care.

As an “unnamed White House official” put it at a press briefing recently, 
“I think it’s important to note that the political movements of nonviolent protests that we’ve seen are rooted in part in a lack of opportunity in the region. You have very large populations of young people, many of whom -- too many of whom cannot find a job. You have a history not just of political rights being restricted but of economic corruption that has also frustrated opportunity.

“So we think it’s important to note that some of the protests in the region are deeply rooted in a lack of individual opportunity and economic growth, as well as a suppression of political rights.

“We also know from our study of the past that successful transitions to democracy depend in part on strong foundations for prosperity, and that reinforcing economic growth is an important way of reinforcing a democratic transition.”

That analysis clearly applies equally to the impoverished inner cities of the US, and indeed increasingly to the entire population of young Americans, who are seeing national policies, state policies and corporate lobbying -- all focused on cutting taxes and boosting corporate profits -- rob them of their futures.

And so it will be, unless and until the youth of America do what Bob Marley long ago advised: “Get up, stand up, stand up for their rights.”

Netanyahu Lectures Obama in Oval Office

(And if this isn't reason enough to distance from Israel, then a reason doesn't exist. Plus, they spy on us, steal top secret data from us, and merely being associated with them makes us a target to much of the Arab world. Israel is like the idiot friend you keep having to bail out of trouble. At some point, you have to cut them off.--jef)

++++++++++++++

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON -- Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Barack Obama against chasing what he called a Middle East peace "based on illusions" as he lectured the US president amid a widening rift in US-Israeli ties.

In a dramatic Oval Office appearance, after 90 minutes of talks Friday, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphatically vowed Israel would never return to its 1967 borders and laid down a set of non-negotiable conditions for peace talks.

The exchange, which left hopes for Obama's peace drive more remote than ever, came a day after the US president called on Israel to accept a return to territorial lines in place before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, with mutual land swaps with Palestinians to frame a secure peace.
But Netanyahu seized on the notion that he was being asked to return solely to Israel's 1967 footprint, which he said was nine miles wide in places and half the size of the "Beltway" highway surrounding Washington.

"While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines -- because these lines are indefensible," Netanyahu said, looking Obama squarely in the eye.

Israelis argue that returning to the former border configuration would leave Israeli population centers vulnerable and mean uprooting hundreds of thousands of settlers from homes in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Netanyahu did not however mention the second part of Obama's stipulation -- namely that land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians, would change those 1967 lines to ensure two secure, contiguous states.

The White House insisted that it had never said that Israel should return to a narrow definition of its 1967 territorial lines.

Asked whether Netanyahu was willfully misinterpreting Obama's remarks, White House spokesman Jay Carney said such an observation was "interesting."

Privately, White House officials appeared infuriated by Netanyahu's combative approach, which even included a lecture for Obama on the historic struggles of the Jewish people.

In his first reaction to Obama's comments on the border issue, in a major speech on the Middle East on Thursday, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said that Obama should press Netanyahu to accept his position.

"Netanyahu's position is an official rejection of Mr Obama's initiative, of international legitimacy and of international law."

Obama admitted that he had Netanyahu had "differences" on language and formulations over the best approach to reviving peace talks stalled since last year, but saw a moment of opportunity amid the "Arab spring."

"I think that it is possible for us to shape a deal that allows Israel to secure itself, not to be vulnerable, but also allows it to resolve what has obviously been a wrenching issue for both peoples for decades now."

Obama also noted that he shared Israel's concerns over Syria and Iran and backed the Israeli position on the tie up between the Palestinian Fatah movement and the Islamist group Hamas.
Netanyahu said Abbas had to pick between Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction and peace, or making peace with Israel.

The Israeli leader then launched into a history lesson of the struggles of the Jewish people, which Obama watched from a nearby chair, his hand over his mouth.

"A peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality," Netanyahu said.

"We don't have a lot of margin for error... because, Mr President, history will not give the Jewish people another chance."

After the talks, a senior Israeli official accused Obama of raising "unreasonable expectations" that could set the peace process back "dozens of years" by seeking a Middle East deal based on the 1967 borders.
 
"We had to put our foot down," he added.

Analysts said Obama became the first president to specifically state that the 1967 borders should be the basis for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, shut down over a settlements row last year.

But they also warned the statement could cost him support during next year'e elections among Jewish and pro-Israel voters.

"A lot of Democrats are not going to agree with this, and a lot of Democrats are not going to be Democratic in the voting booth," said New York political strategist Hank Sheinkopf.

On Sunday, Obama will address the powerful Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) before heading off on a week-long trip to Europe.

Netanyahu will also speak to AIPAC and will make a joint address to Congress next week, encouraged by Republican leaders who support his position.

Washington on the Rocks

An Empire of Autocrats, Aristocrats and Uniformed Thugs Begins to Totter
Monday 25 April 2011
by: Alfred McCoy and Brett Reilly, TomDispatch

In one of history’s lucky accidents, the juxtaposition of two extraordinary events has stripped the architecture of American global power bare for all to see. Last November, WikiLeaks splashed snippets from U.S. embassy cables, loaded with scurrilous comments about national leaders from Argentina to Zimbabwe, on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Then just a few weeks later, the Middle East erupted in pro-democracy protests against the region’s autocratic leaders, many of whom were close U.S. allies whose foibles had been so conveniently detailed in those same diplomatic cables.

Suddenly, it was possible to see the foundations of a U.S. world order that rested significantly on national leaders who serve Washington as loyal “subordinate elites” and who are, in reality, a motley collection of autocrats, aristocrats, and uniformed thugs. Visible as well was the larger logic of otherwise inexplicable U.S. foreign policy choices over the past half-century.

Why would the CIA risk controversy in 1965, at the height of the Cold War, by overthrowing an accepted leader like Sukarno in Indonesia or encouraging the assassination of the Catholic autocrat Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon in 1963? The answer -- and thanks to WikiLeaks and the “Arab spring,” this is now so much clearer -- is that both were Washington’s chosen subordinates until each became insubordinate and expendable.

Why, half a century later, would Washington betray its stated democratic principles by backing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak against millions of demonstrators and then, when he faltered, use its leverage to replace him, at least initially with his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, a man best known for running Cairo’s torture chambers (and lending them out to Washington)? The answer again: because both were reliable subordinates who had long served Washington’s interests well in this key Arab state.

Across the Greater Middle East from Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain and Yemen, democratic protests are threatening to sweep away subordinate elites crucial to the wielding of American power. Of course, all modern empires have relied on dependable surrogates to translate their global power into local control -- and for most of them, the moment when those elites began to stir, talk back, and set their own agendas was also the moment when it became clear that imperial collapse was in the cards.

If the "velvet revolutions” that swept Eastern Europe in 1989 tolled the death knell for the Soviet empire, then the "jasmine revolutions" now spreading across the Middle East may well mark the beginning of the end for American global power.

Putting the Military in Charge

To understand the importance of local elites, look back to the Cold War’s early days when a desperate White House was searching for something, anything that could halt the seemingly unstoppable spread of what Washington saw as anti-American and pro-communist sentiment. In December 1954, the National Security Council (NSC) met in the White House to stake out a strategy that could tame the powerful nationalist forces of change then sweeping the globe.

Across Asia and Africa, a half-dozen European empires that had guaranteed global order for more than a century were giving way to 100 new nations, many -- as Washington saw it -- susceptible to “communist subversion.” In Latin America, there were stirrings of leftist opposition to the region’s growing urban poverty and rural landlessness.

After a review of the “threats” facing the U.S. in Latin America, influential Treasury Secretary George Humphrey informed his NSC colleagues that they should “stop talking so much about democracy” and instead “support dictatorships of the right if their policies are pro-American.” At that moment with a flash of strategic insight, Dwight Eisenhower interrupted to observe that Humphrey was, in effect, saying, “They’re OK if they’re our s.o.b.’s.”

It was a moment to remember, for the President of the United States had just articulated with crystalline clarity the system of global dominion that Washington would implement for the next 50 years -- setting aside democratic principles for a tough realpolitik policy of backing any reliable leader willing to support the U.S., thereby building a worldwide network of national (and often nationalist) leaders who would, in a pinch, put Washington’s needs above local ones.

Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. would favor military autocrats in Latin America, aristocrats across the Middle East, and a mixture of democrats and dictators in Asia. In 1958, military coups in Thailand and Iraq suddenly put the spotlight on Third World militaries as forces to be reckoned with. It was then that the Eisenhower administration decided to bring foreign military leaders to the U.S. for further “training” to facilitate “the ‘management’ of the forces of change released by the development” of these emerging nations. Henceforth, Washington would pour military aid into the cultivation of the armed forces of allies and potential allies worldwide, while “training missions” would be used to create crucial ties between the U.S. military and the officer corps in country after country -- or where subordinate elites did not seem subordinate enough, help identify alternative leaders.

When civilian presidents proved insubordinate, the Central Intelligence Agency went to work, promoting coups that would install reliable military successors --replacing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who tried to nationalize his country's oil, with General Fazlollah Zahedi (and then the young Shah) in 1953; President Sukarno with General Suharto in Indonesia during the next decade; and of course President Salvador Allende with General Augusto Pinochet in Chile in 1973, to name just three such moments.

In the first years of the twenty-first century, Washington’s trust in the militaries of its client states would only grow. The U.S. was, for example, lavishing $1.3 billion in aid on Egypt’s military annually, but investing only $250 million a year in the country’s economic development. As a result, when demonstrations rocked the regime in Cairo last January, as the New York Times reported, “a 30-year investment paid off as American generals... and intelligence officers quietly called... friends they had trained with,” successfully urging the army’s support for a “peaceful transition” to, yes indeed, military rule.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Washington has, since the 1950s, followed the British imperial preference for Arab aristocrats by cultivating allies that included a shah (Iran), sultans (Abu Dhabi, Oman), emirs (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai), and kings (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco). Across this vast, volatile region from Morocco to Iran, Washington courted these royalist regimes with military alliances, U.S. weapons systems, CIA support for local security, a safe American haven for their capital, and special favors for their elites, including access to educational institutions in the U.S. or Department of Defense overseas schools for their children.

In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice summed up this record thusly: “For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy… in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.”

How It Used to Work

America is by no means the first hegemon to build its global power on the gossamer threads of personal ties to local leaders. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain may have ruled the waves (as America would later rule the skies), but when it came to the ground, like empires past it needed local allies who could serve as intermediaries in controlling complex, volatile societies. Otherwise, how in 1900 could a small island nation of just 40 million with an army of only 99,000 men rule a global empire of some 400 million, nearly a quarter of all humanity?

From 1850 to 1950, Britain controlled its formal colonies through an extraordinary array of local allies -- from Fiji island chiefs and Malay sultans to Indian maharajas and African emirs. Simultaneously, through subordinate elites Britain reigned over an even larger “informal empire” that encompassed emperors (from Beijing to Istanbul), kings (from Bangkok to Cairo), and presidents (from Buenos Aires to Caracas). At its peak in 1880, Britain's informal empire in Latin America, the Middle East, and China was larger, in population, than its formal colonial holdings in India and Africa. Its entire global empire, encompassing nearly half of humanity, rested on these slender ties of cooperation to loyal local elites.

Following four centuries of relentless imperial expansion, however, Europe’s five major overseas empires were suddenly erased from the globe in a quarter-century of decolonization. Between 1947 and 1974, the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese empires faded fast from Asia and Africa, giving way to a hundred new nations, more than half of today’s sovereign states. In searching for an explanation for this sudden, sweeping change, most scholars agree with British imperial historian Ronald Robinson who famously argued that “when colonial rulers had run out of indigenous collaborators,” their power began to fade.

During the Cold War that coincided with this era of rapid decolonization, the world’s two superpowers turned to the same methods regularly using their espionage agencies to manipulate the leaders of newly independent states. The Soviet Union’s KGB and its surrogates like the Stasi in East Germany and the Securitate in Romania enforced political conformity among the 14 Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe and challenged the U.S. for loyal allies across the Third World. Simultaneously, the CIA monitored the loyalties of presidents, autocrats, and dictators on four continents, employing coups, bribery, and covert penetration to control and, when necessary, remove nettlesome leaders.

In an era of nationalist feeling, however, the loyalty of local elites proved a complex matter indeed. Many of them were driven by conflicting loyalties and often deep feelings of nationalism, which meant that they had to be monitored closely. So critical were these subordinate elites, and so troublesome were their insubordinate iterations, that the CIA repeatedly launched risky covert operations to bring them to heel, sparking some of the great crises of the Cold War.

Given the rise of its system of global control in a post-World War II age of independence, Washington had little choice but to work not simply with surrogates or puppets, but with allies who -- admittedly from weaker positions -- still sought to maximize what they saw as their nations’ interests (as well as their own). Even at the height of American global power in the 1950s, when its dominance was relatively unquestioned, Washington was forced into hard bargaining with the likes of the Philippines’ Raymond Magsaysay, South Korean autocrat Syngman Rhee, and South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem.

In South Korea during the 1960s, for instance, General Park Chung Hee, then president, bartered troop deployments to Vietnam for billions of U.S. development dollars, which helped spark the country's economic "miracle." In the process, Washington paid up, but got what it most wanted: 50,000 of those tough Korean troops as guns-for-hire helpers in its unpopular war in Vietnam.

Post-Cold War World

After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, ending the Cold War, Moscow quickly lost its satellite states from Estonia to Azerbaijan, as once-loyal Soviet surrogates were ousted or leapt off the sinking ship of empire. For Washington, the “victor” and soon to be the “sole superpower” on planet Earth, the same process would begin to happen, but at a far slower pace.

Over the next two decades, globalization fostered a multipolar system of rising powers in Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow, Ankara, and Brasilia, even as a denationalized system of corporate power reduced the dependency of developing economies on any single state, however imperial. With its capacity for controlling elites receding, Washington has faced ideological competition from Islamic fundamentalism, European regulatory regimes, Chinese state capitalism, and a rising tide of economic nationalism in Latin America.

As U.S. power and influence declined, Washington’s attempts to control its subordinate elites began to fail, often spectacularly -- including its efforts to topple bête noire Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in a badly bungled 2002 coup, to detach ally Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia from Russia’s orbit in 2008, and to oust nemesis Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 Iranian elections. Where a CIA coup or covert cash once sufficed to defeat an antagonist, the Bush administration needed a massive invasion to topple just one troublesome dictator, Saddam Hussein. Even then, it found its plans for subsequent regime change in Syria and Iran blocked when these states instead aided a devastating insurgency against U.S. forces inside Iraq.

Similarly, despite the infusions of billions of dollars in foreign aid, Washington has found it nearly impossible to control the Afghan president it installed in power, Hamid Karzai, who memorably summed up his fractious relationship with Washington to American envoys this way: “If you're looking for a stooge and calling a stooge a partner, no. If you're looking for a partner, yes.”

Then, late in 2010, WikiLeaks began distributing those thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables that offer uncensored insights into Washington’s weakening control over the system of surrogate power that it had built up for 50 years. In reading these documents, Israeli journalist Aluf Benn of Haaretz could see “the fall of the American empire, the decline of a superpower that ruled the world by the dint of its military and economic supremacy.” No longer, he added, are “American ambassadors… received in world capitals as ‘high commissioners'... [instead they are] tired bureaucrats [who] spend their days listening wearily to their hosts' talking points, never reminding them who is the superpower and who the client state.”

Indeed, what the WikiLeaks documents show is a State Department struggling to manage an unruly global system of increasingly insubordinate elites by any means possible -- via intrigue to collect needed information and intelligence, friendly acts meant to coax compliance, threats to coerce cooperation, and billions of dollars in misspent aid to court influence. In early 2009, for instance, the State Department instructed its embassies worldwide to play imperial police by collecting comprehensive data on local leaders, including “email addresses, telephone and fax numbers, fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans.” Showing its need, like some colonial governor, for incriminating information on the locals, the State Department also pressed its Bahrain embassy for sordid details, damaging in an Islamic society, about the kingdom’s crown princes, asking: “Is there any derogatory information on either prince? Does either prince drink alcohol? Does either one use drugs?"

With the hauteur of latter-day imperial envoys, U.S. diplomats seemed to empower themselves for dominance by dismissing “the Turks neo-Ottoman posturing around the Middle East and Balkans,” or by knowing the weaknesses of their subordinate elites, notably Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s “voluptuous blonde” nurse, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s morbid fear of military coups, or Afghan Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud’s $52 million in stolen funds.

As its influence declines, however, Washington is finding many of its chosen local allies either increasingly insubordinate or irrelevant, particularly in the strategic Middle East. In mid-2009, for instance, the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia reported that “President Ben Ali… and his regime have lost touch with the Tunisian people,” relying “on the police for control,” while “corruption in the inner circle is growing” and “the risks to the regime's long-term stability are increasing.” Even so, the U.S. envoy could only recommend that Washington “dial back the public criticism” and instead rely only on “frequent high-level private candor” -- a policy that failed to produce any reforms before demonstrations toppled the regime just 18 months later.

Similarly, in late 2008 the American Embassy in Cairo feared that “Egyptian democracy and human rights efforts... are being suffocated.” However, as the embassy admitted, “we would not like to contemplate complications for U.S. regional interests should the U.S.-Egyptian bond be seriously weakened.” When Mubarak visited Washington a few months later, the Embassy urged the White House “to restore the sense of warmth that has traditionally characterized the U.S.-Egyptian partnership.” And so in June 2009, just 18 months before the Egyptian president’s downfall, President Obama hailed this useful dictator as “a stalwart ally... a force for stability and good in the region."

As the crisis in Cairo’s Tahrir Square unfolded, respected opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei complained bitterly that Washington was pushing “the whole Arab world into radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression.” After 40 years of U.S. dominion, the Middle East was, he said, “a collection of failed states that add nothing to humanity or science” because “people were taught not to think or to act, and were consistently given an inferior education.”

Absent a global war capable of simply sweeping away an empire, the decline of a great power is often a fitful, painful, drawn-out affair. In addition to the two American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down to something not so far short of defeat, the nation’s capital is now writhing in fiscal crisis, the coin of the realm is losing its creditworthiness, and longtime allies are forging economic and even military ties to rival China. To all of this, we must now add the possible loss of loyal surrogates across the Middle East.

For more than 50 years, Washington has been served well by a system of global power based on subordinate elites. That system once facilitated the extension of American influence worldwide with a surprising efficiency and (relatively speaking) an economy of force. Now, however, those loyal allies increasingly look like an empire of failed or insubordinate states. Make no mistake: the degradation of, or ending of, half a century of such ties is likely to leave Washington on the rocks.

No More Mr. Nice Autocracy

Democrats and Republicans alike have long wished that U.S.-allied Arab states would forever remain docile dictatorships.
by Chris Toensing
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 by OtherWords

Egyptian current events prove one point for good: Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, U.S. presidents wish their favored Arab states would forever remain nice, docile autocracies.

Of course, the Obama administration protests loudly to the contrary. President Barack Obama has gone on national television twice during Egypt's amazingly courageous popular uprising to profess his admiration for the pro-democracy protesters in the streets. He praised their stand for "universal" human rights. Addressing them directly, he expressed his "unyielding belief that you will determine your own destiny and seize the promise of a better future for your children and your grandchildren."

Nice words, even inspiring. In the next breath, however, Obama undercut them. He called for an "orderly transition" to a new government "grounded in democratic principles." But he entrusted this transition to the quasi-military regime faction that took control of Egypt amidst calls for the removal of the long-time dictator, President Hosni Mubarak. Headed by newly named Vice President Omar Suleiman, this is a bunch of foxes guarding the proverbial henhouse.

Suleiman and his backers in the army and security services have adopted the phrase "orderly transition," because it suits their authoritarian purposes. By "orderly," they mean a rapid restoration of normal life in Cairo and across Egypt. Far from seeing their revolution through to its conclusion, the protesters are told to go home and mind their own business. If they don't, they risk being beaten up or shot by the regime's hired goons. By "transition," they mean a deliberate handover of presidential prerogatives from 82-year-old Mubarak to Suleiman or someone comparable. This transfer of power will be democratic in name only. It may happen in the shape of an election, but that election will be anything but free and fair.

The White House's paeans to people power notwithstanding, the Obama administration doesn't mind the Suleiman gang's plans for subverting the will of the Egyptian street. In line with its predecessors of both parties, this administration fears true self-determination for the long-suffering Egyptian population.

It's not just that unfettered elections could bring Islamists to power, scaring Israel and other U.S.-allied Arab governments. It's that any Egyptian government that genuinely represents the ideas and aspirations of the people won't be as friendly to strategic U.S. objectives in the Middle East: keeping the oil flowing to the world market at artificially low prices and keeping Israel at peace with its Arab neighbors even as its colonization of Palestinian land proceeds.

Under Mubarak and Anwar al-Sadat before him, Egypt has been a cornerstone of U.S. dominion in the region. Sadat was the first Arab leader to sign a non-aggression pact with Israel. Not only has Mubarak maintained the resulting "cold peace," but he has--to the fury of ordinary Egyptians--helped Israel blockade the Gaza Strip to punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas.

Egypt itself has limited oil reserves, but the Suez Canal, which lies between the two parts of Egypt, provides a crucial conduit for the tankers bearing the Persian Gulf's hydrocarbon treasures to Europe and beyond. Last but not least, the Egyptian secret police have routinely carried out the dirty work of the U.S.-led "war on terrorism." More than one detainee who was later proven innocent has been tortured in Egyptian dungeons.

The Obama administration is loath to disturb this convenient arrangement. Sure, Mubarak himself can go, if need be. But the regime has been too reliable and useful a partner to abandon to fate. The White House will continue to talk out of both sides of its mouth, urging real reform at the microphone even as it restrains its demands over the telephone.

Only two forces can shake this bipartisan policy consensus about democracy in Egypt and the Arab world: Egyptians or another Arab people could succeed in revolutions, forcing the United States to change its tune. Or the American people, in the name of life, liberty, and human decency, could demand a policy that stops making a mockery of everything the United States is supposed to represent.

American Hypocrisy in the Middle East

Things Have to Change in Order to Remain the Same
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The hypocrisy of the US government is yet again demonstrated in full bore force. The US government invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, laid waste to much of the countries including entire villages and towns, and massacred untold numbers of civilians in order "to bring democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now after days of Egyptians in the streets demanding "Mubarak must go," the US government remains aligned with its puppet Egyptian ruler, even suggesting that Mubarak, after running a police state for three decades, is the appropriate person to implement democracy in Egypt.

On January 30, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that "freedom and democracy" America neither seeks nor supports the ouster of the Egyptian dictator. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu told the US and Europe that criticism of Mubarak must be curbed in order "to preserve stability in the region."

By "stability" Netanyahu means the unimpeded ability of Israel to continue oppressing the Palestinians and stealing their country. Mubarak has been for three decades the well-paid enforcer for the US and Israel, sealing off Gaza from the outside world and preventing aid flows across the Egyptian border. Mubarak and his family have become multi-billionaires, thanks to the American taxpayer, and the US government, both Republicans and Democrats, do not want to lose their heavy investment in Mubarak.

The US government has long corrupted Arab governments by paying rulers installed by the US to represent US/Israeli interests rather than the interest of Arab peoples. Arabs put up with American-financed oppression for many years, but now are showing signs of rebellion.

The murderous American-installed dictator in Tunis was overthrown by people taking to the streets. Rebellion has spread to Egypt and there are also street protests against the US-supported rulers in Yemen and Jordan.

These uprisings might succeed in ousting puppet rulers, but will the result be anything more than the exchange of a new American puppet ruler for the old? Mubarak might go, but whoever takes his place is likely to find himself wearing the same American harness.

What dictators do is to eliminate alternative leadership. Potential leaders are either assassinated, exiled, or imprisoned. Moreover, anything short of a full-fledge revolution, such as the Iranian one, leaves in place a bureaucracy accustomed to business as usual. In addition, Egypt and the country's military have grown accustomed to American support and will want the money to keep flowing. It is the flow of this money that ensures the purchase of the replacement government.

Because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, the US government has financial dominance and the ability to financially isolate other countries, such as Iran. To break free of America's grip, one of two things would have to happen. Revolution would have to sweep the Arab world and result in an economic unity that could foster indigenous economic development, or the US dollar has to fail as world currency.

Arab disunity has long been the means by which the Western countries have dominated the Middle East. Without this disunity, Israel and the US could not abuse the Palestinians in the manner in which they have for decades, and without this disunity the US could not have invaded Iraq. It is unlikely that the Arabs will suddenly unite themselves.

The collapse of the dollar is more likely. Indeed, the policy of the US government to maximize both budget and trade deficits, and the policy of the Federal Reserve to monetize the budget deficit and the fraudulent paper assets of the large banks, have the dollar heading for demise.

As the supply of dollars grows, the value diminishes. Perhaps the time is not far off when rulers cease to sell out their peoples for American money.

Go your own way! USA's "Lindsay" to Israel's "Stevie"

(Just remember, even more powerful than the health insurance lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby, and maybe even the bank lobby, is AIPAC. They have so much sway over our legislative body, it's sickening. It's the source of power the neocons have...--jef)

Israel vs. America: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
By Justin Raimondo
March 16, 2010

The brouhaha over what Hillary Clinton said was Israel’s calculated "insult" to the United States is escalating into what many characterize as a "crisis" in US-Israeli relations, a turning point in which the terms of the "special relationship" are about to undergo a major change. When Joe Biden berated his hosts for making the settlements announcement as he arrived on Israeli soil, it was as if a light bulb went off over his head:

"This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden is reported to have said. "What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace."

"Starting to get dangerous for us"? I find it difficult to believe this is the first time anyone in Washington has noticed the chief strategic consequence of the Iraq war, and that is what might be called the umbrella effect. Due to the heavy US presence in Iraq, the Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf, Israel feels empowered to push a brazenly expansionist agenda. The umbrella effect was a key reason why the Israel lobby pushed hard for the invasion and occupation of Iraq: it put US soldiers in between the Israelis and their multifold enemies in the region.

Whether that was the intention all along is largely irrelevant. Ensconced smack dab in the middle of the Arab world, our troops were and are sitting ducks, useful to the Israelis because their presence diverts Arab anger and retaliation away from Israel and toward other targets – namely, American soldiers in Iraq.

Furthermore, the inevitable consequence of the invasion was to place US soldiers in a position where they could be dragged in to a wider war in the Middle East on Israel’s behalf. The conquest of Iraq implied a continuing and wider effort by the US to "transform" the region, a conflict that would, not so coincidentally, improve Israel’s position, and indeed this was the rhetoric employed by the Bush administration and its supporters in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The news that it was General David Petraeus, CENTCOM commander and author of the Iraq "surge," who raised the alarm over the regional consequences of Israeli intransigence back in January, is indicative of a point I have long made in this space: that ever since 9/11, objective circumstances required a US tilt away from Israel. That the impetus for a policy change is coming from Petraeus underscores the objective nature of the conditions forcing US policymakers to confront what has by now become a serious military problem.

Unfortunately for Petraeus and the US officer corps, this is a major domestic political problem for the Obama administration, which is loath to take on the Israel lobby – and with good reason. Which is why they’re backpedaling furiously, and denying Biden ever said or meant what he clearly did mean and did say.

The outcry in Congress, from Democrats as well as Republicans, in Israel’s defense has been almost comical in its outlandish support for a foreign country over one’s own: a kind of inverse Bizarro-patriotism of the sort that we haven’t seen since US leftists waved the flag of the National Liberation Front at antiwar rallies during the Vietnam era. The big difference being that this fifth column is enormously successful and influential, motivating Democrats to denounce a President and an administration of their own party, and orchestrating such an outcry that the Pentagon and the State Department will be forced to back down.

In any conflict between objective reality and political reality, when it comes to foreign policy the latter is bound to win out. That is why Israel and its lobby in America have invested so many resources into influencing US public opinion, and, more than that, setting the parameters of the debate – such as it is – over US policy in the Middle East, and US relations with the Jewish state.

The long arm of the Israelis reaches directly into the US via an active and well-funded lobby, which reflexively defends the actions of the Israeli government and seeks to discredit the Palestinian cause in every venue. Up until recently it was impossible to say this without being called all sorts of nasty names. More recently, however, while the nastiness has if anything escalated, the smear brigade is less successful at driving their opponents to the margins of public discourse. Objective reality – otherwise known as the truth – matters. Dead US soldiers whose demise could have been prevented matter greatly – and that somber reality can be masked by propaganda and "spin" only so long.

General Petraeus is concerned with the safety of his troops, and so it was the military that took the lead in this instance. Unfortunately, this is one battle that the politicians are none too eager to fight, and my guess is that this crisis will pass – although of course it will continue to bubble underground, periodically coming to the surface at key junctures, reminding our "leaders" that reality always has the last word.

Military and strategic imperatives demand a rupture, or at least a radical divergence, between the US and Israel: political reality forbids it. As the old song puts it: something’s gotta give.