Now here's a reviewer who's never met a WASP war criminal he didn't like*:
"I think [Dick Cheney's autobiography] is the most important memoir to emerge so far from the Bush era. The thing I like most about it is the thing many critics hate: the unapologetic, straightforward explanation and defence of the policies Cheney promoted for the 8 years of his vice-presidency." (Heartfelt defence of the Bush years, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 15/10/11)
Fast forward to: "I do have one modest complaint about this memoir, however, and that is the things that are left out."
Let's see. There's China for one, and religion - but here's the one I really want to focus on: "Nor, beyond saying that he supported the military commitment, does he offer anything much about what he thought of the Vietnam war, which took place when he was a young adult."
Vietnam, eh? Here we have Australia's self-styled most influential foreign affairs analyst in Australian journalism, a guy who's not only met and interviewed Cheney, and who once summed him up as a "straightshooter," who finds it a tad strange that his "straightshooter" doesn't mention the war. Well, Greg, here's the reason why:
"In an era when many young men avoided military service for many reasons, few were so meticulous about the endeavor as Dick Cheney. Indeed, when the future secretary of defense arrived on the University of Wisconsin campus, he was arguably one of the most accomplished - and inventive - draft dodgers in the country. Unlike George W Bush, who performed some sort of service - ill defined and unrecorded as it may have been - in the Texas Air National Guard, Dick Cheney reacted to the prospect of wearing his country's uniform as a man with a deadly allergy to olive drab. Between 1963 and 1965, Cheney used his student status at Casper College and the University of Wyoming to apply for and receive four 2S draft deferments. As the fight in Vietnam heated up, Cheney fought like a true warrior to defend his deferments. Twenty-two days after Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, raising the prospect of a rapid expansion of the draft, Dick 'conveniently' - in the words of a 1991 Washington Post profile - married Lynne. Even if his student deferment was lifted, his status as a married man might have made the draft board more sensitive to Cheney's consistent, if frequently reframed, argument that he was needed on the home front, but the Vietnamese were not cooperating with Cheney's plan.
"The war kept demanding more and more American men, and the range of those who were eligible for the draft expanded rapidly. On May 19, 1965, it looked as if Dick Cheney's deferments would no longer protect him. He was reclassified with the most dangerous, draft status: 1A, 'available for military service'. No longer protected by his eternal student status, Cheney was still counting on his marriage to keep him off the front lines. But events were conspiring against him.
"Struggling to maintain the manpower for a war that he still thought could be won, President Lyndon Johnson announced on July 28, 1965, that draft call-ups would double. Three months later, on October 26, 1965, the Selective Services constraints on the drafting of childless married men were lifted. Da Nang was calling. And it did not look as though Dick had any excuses left. But there was one way for ambitious young men to avoid serving their country while maintaining their political viability. If Cheney had a child, he would be reclassified 3A, the status that allowed married men with dependents to remain out of uniform. That would work. Except, of course, that Cheney did not have a child - yet. Precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service eliminated special protections for childless married men, Cheney was no longer childless. His daughter Elizabeth was born on July 28, 1966. Convenient? Coincidence? That's not Cheney's style. Writer, Timothy Noah, did the math and suggested that the timing of Elizabeth's arrival 'would seem to indicate that the Cheneys, though doubtless planning to have children some time, were seized with an untamable passion the moment Dick Cheney became vulnerable to the draft. And acted on it. Carpe diem! Who says government policy can't affect human behaviour'. Of course, Dick Cheney left nothing to chance. He applied for 3A status immediately, receiving it on January 19, 1966, while Lynne was still in the first trimester of her pregnancy.
"Twenty-three years later, when Cheney appeared before the Senate to plead the case for his confirmation as GHW Bush's secretary of defense, the nominee was questioned about his failure to serve. Cheney responded by saying he 'would have obviously been happy to serve had I been called'. In a more truthful moment that same year, Cheney admitted to Washington Post reporter George C. Wilson that 'I had other priorities in the sixties than military service'. Cheney's lie to the Senate has never caused much concern, but that 'other priorities' line has dogged him." (The Rise & Rise of Richard B. Cheney, John Nichols, 2004, pp 35-37)
[*See my 29/1/08 post Greg Sheridan: In Praise of 'Great' Men.]
Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Laptop Bombardier
"One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today [2002]. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists." Michael Ledeen - quoted in Stephen J Sniegoski, Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, & the National Interest of Israel, 2008, p 209)
Given his key role in the crime against humanity which is the Anglo-American invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq, Tony Blair's just-published autobiography, Tony Blair: A Journey, is rightly receiving some attention in the press. Although I haven't yet read it, I was particularly struck, in the following press report, by this reference to George W Bush's Svengali, Vice-President Dick Cheney:
"While lashing out at his successor, Gordon Brown, he praises his wartime ally George W Bush as intelligent and principled, although he reveals that others in the Bush administration had a hankering for invading Middle Eastern countries beyond Iraq. In a chilling insight into the mood of the Bush White House, Blair says vice-president Dick Cheney 'would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it - Hezbollah, Hamas etc. In other words, he thought the world had to be made anew and that after September 11, it had to be done by force and with urgency. He was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. We're coming after you so change or be changed'." (Blair's book reveals background to war, Peter Wilson, The Australian, 2/9/10)
Neocon bastards like Cheney, and his offsiders, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whom Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to in 2002 as "fucking crazies," are nothing if not consistent. For example, if Cheney and Wolfowitz had had their way at the time of the first Gulf War (1991), Iraq might have been 'cauldronized' over a decade earlier:
"[Secretary of Defense] Cheney's secret team came up with Operation Scorpion, an elaborate plan that involved sending US troops to remote regions west of Baghdad, from which they could, presumably, threaten Saddam. [Commander of Coalition Forces General Norman] Schwarzkopf got wind of the scheme and pointed out that it would be impossible to supply troops who were dispatched to the distant deserts of western Iraq. [President George H W] Bush and [Secretary of State James] Baker, who recognized the diplomatic disaster that the plan to depose an Arab leader would create, backed the general, and Operation Scorpion was quickly consigned to the dustbin of history - although Cheney and [Under-Secretary of Defense for policy Paul] Wolfowitz would continue to entertain fantasies about 'decapitating' Saddam and imposing 'regime change'. The Operation Scorpion plot raised real questions about Cheney's capacity to contribute to the war effort. Schwarzkopf would later express his frustration with Cheney's Operation Scorpion scheming, observing, 'I wondered whether Cheney had succumbed to the phenomenon I'd observed among some secretaries of the army. Put a civilian in charge of professional military men and before long he's no longer satisfied with setting policy but wants to out-general the generals'. Duly chastened, Cheney, whom the Washington Post took to referring to as 'the desk-chair warrior', faded from the forefront of the Iraq effort." (The Rise & Rise of Richard B Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History, John Nichols, 2004, pp 116-117)
Given his key role in the crime against humanity which is the Anglo-American invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq, Tony Blair's just-published autobiography, Tony Blair: A Journey, is rightly receiving some attention in the press. Although I haven't yet read it, I was particularly struck, in the following press report, by this reference to George W Bush's Svengali, Vice-President Dick Cheney:
"While lashing out at his successor, Gordon Brown, he praises his wartime ally George W Bush as intelligent and principled, although he reveals that others in the Bush administration had a hankering for invading Middle Eastern countries beyond Iraq. In a chilling insight into the mood of the Bush White House, Blair says vice-president Dick Cheney 'would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it - Hezbollah, Hamas etc. In other words, he thought the world had to be made anew and that after September 11, it had to be done by force and with urgency. He was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. We're coming after you so change or be changed'." (Blair's book reveals background to war, Peter Wilson, The Australian, 2/9/10)
Neocon bastards like Cheney, and his offsiders, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whom Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to in 2002 as "fucking crazies," are nothing if not consistent. For example, if Cheney and Wolfowitz had had their way at the time of the first Gulf War (1991), Iraq might have been 'cauldronized' over a decade earlier:
"[Secretary of Defense] Cheney's secret team came up with Operation Scorpion, an elaborate plan that involved sending US troops to remote regions west of Baghdad, from which they could, presumably, threaten Saddam. [Commander of Coalition Forces General Norman] Schwarzkopf got wind of the scheme and pointed out that it would be impossible to supply troops who were dispatched to the distant deserts of western Iraq. [President George H W] Bush and [Secretary of State James] Baker, who recognized the diplomatic disaster that the plan to depose an Arab leader would create, backed the general, and Operation Scorpion was quickly consigned to the dustbin of history - although Cheney and [Under-Secretary of Defense for policy Paul] Wolfowitz would continue to entertain fantasies about 'decapitating' Saddam and imposing 'regime change'. The Operation Scorpion plot raised real questions about Cheney's capacity to contribute to the war effort. Schwarzkopf would later express his frustration with Cheney's Operation Scorpion scheming, observing, 'I wondered whether Cheney had succumbed to the phenomenon I'd observed among some secretaries of the army. Put a civilian in charge of professional military men and before long he's no longer satisfied with setting policy but wants to out-general the generals'. Duly chastened, Cheney, whom the Washington Post took to referring to as 'the desk-chair warrior', faded from the forefront of the Iraq effort." (The Rise & Rise of Richard B Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History, John Nichols, 2004, pp 116-117)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH 2
One of my commentators, 'g', after complaining to the Sydney Morning Herald about the failure of its columnist Paul Sheehan to disclose that his November 2008 trip to Israel was sponsored by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD) and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, received an email from letters editor Mike Ticher informing him/her that Sheehan would be "addressing the issue in next week's column." (See my 13/1/09 post Oriana Fallaci Meets Israeli PR at the SMH & g's comment following my 16/1/09 post Sleepless in Sderot, Legless in Gaza)
A disclosure of sorts duly emerged in Sheehan's column of 19/1/09, Obama is walking a high wire. To find it one had first to wade through the following sludge: Barak Obama is eminently qualified for the presidency because he displays "intellectual adroitness, from his choice of cabinet to his choice of words. Even his choice of TV show..." Which can only mean that, if you can put together a cabinet that Dick Cheney approves of*, string a few words together (unlike Bush), and enjoy a TV show about "dysfunctional" black Americans, you've got the makings of an American president that Sheehan would approve of. All this, however, is just by way of getting to the real subject of the column - the Middle East conflict.
[*Cheney has described Obama's national security team as "a pretty good team."]
Sheehan opines that "it is of some concern that [Obama] will make the Middle East his priority, in particular the Arab-Jewish schism." Why this should be concerning he doesn't say. Then there's that nonsense about "the Arab-Jewish schism." I certainly wasn't aware that there was once a religion, X, which split into Arabs (an ethnic descriptor) and Jews (a religious descriptor), but that's Sheehan for you. He goes on: "The Israeli-Palestinian divide has done little to enhance the reputation of Congress or American presidents for the last 60 years." Hm. Reading Sheehan is often like reading tea leaves in the dark, and about as useful. He seems to be saying that Congress/American presidents have always come out the worst for wear as far as the Middle East conflict is concerned. If so, the logical thing would suely be to acknowledge the reason for this state of affairs - the Israel Lobby's stranglehold on US policy in the Middle East. But Sheehan's not going there, of course.
"Here," he rambles on, "I have found another significant detail about the new president. Last year, in Chicago, Obama spent 2 hours being briefed by Khaled Abu Toameh. He listened, he wrote a lot of notes', Toameh told me." Toameh who? "For years Toameh has repeatedly antagonised and embarrassed the Israeli Government, and the Fatah and Hamas parties in the Palestinian territories, by exposing lies and brutal acts on all sides." The Israeli Government, really? Let's check out Toameh's latest (2/1/09) antagonisings and embarrassings of the Israeli Government, shall we? "In recent weeks, Hamas and its supporters did almost everything to drag Israel into a new round of violence. By refusing to extend the unofficial [!?] cease-fire with Israel that expired 2 weeks ago, Hamas paved the way for the massive IDF operation designed to halt the rocket attacks on Israel. The Palestinians who are now shouting and crying because of the Israeli offensive should direct their anger first and foremost toward the 'elected' [!!?] government of Hamas. Tragically, the Palestinians who voted for Hamas and those who continue to rally behind the movement are responsible for the ongoing violence. They had a chance to revolt against Hamas, but chose to either remain silent or continue siding with the movement." (Hamas & the Palestinians, hudsonny.org) The man's a veritable scourge! You couldn't possibly get anything more antagonising and embarrassing for Israel than that, now could you?
Toameh who? "Toameh is a Palestinian Muslim who lives in East Jerusalem. He works as the Palestinian affairs correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, is an authority on Fatah and Hamas, and is widely sought as a consultant by foreign media." Yes, this fearless antagoniser and embarrasser of Israel works for the rightwing Jerusalem Post, and is much sought after by the right people, like those over at the Hudson New York thinktank (hudsonny.com), for example, which recruits "moderate Muslims" to, among other things, "counter lawsuits intended to intimidate and silence critics of religious extremism, and combat States which train children to be suicide killers." At Hudson-NY, you'll be pleased to know that Toameh rubs shoulders with other much sought after antagonisers and embarrassers of Israel such as Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, Douglas Feith and Irshad Manji.
Now according to Sheehan, Toameh reckons Israel, the US and the EU "have been deluded about the growing strength and pragmatism of Hamas." Back to those tealeaves in the dark. Does this mean that Toameh thinks Hamas is a pragmatic organization, but the 3 amigos don't believe it is, or that he thinks Hamas is not pragmatic but the 3 amigos believe it is? And you'd better give a rat's arse what Toameh thinks, folks, because, according to Sheehan, "everything [Toameh] predicted has come to pass." And what, dear reader, has this prophet and scourge of Israel predicted? Sheehan doesn't say. But, hey, the fact that, according to Sheehan, Obama "has gone outside the policy makers, think-tankers, lobbyists and armchair experts" and listened to "someone who inhabits the dangerous territory between... sworn enemies" gives us a real "insight" into the man. Oh? And who, I wonder, brought them together? Hudson-NY?
Ah, at last: "I had a briefing with Toameh in November, though can claim no credit for finding him. It was part of a study tour for Australian journalists to Israel, sponsored by the Jewish Board of Deputies which was omitted from my column last week." Why was it omitted? And who, pray tell, omitted it? Questions! Questions!
But it's not so much the forced, buried, glancing nature of Sheehan's disclosure that concerns me - that was utterly predictable. No, something else has been omitted here. You see, Sheehan's met the prohet and scourge before on a previous trip to Israel in 2006, a trip, which, if sponsored by the JBOD, is a fact he also failed to disclose at the time. That trip yielded 2 pro-Israel columns, the second of which, A sovereign Palestine? No chance (1/1/07), introduced us to a "prominent Palestinian moderate, Khaled Abu Toameh... who writes for The Jerusalem Post." Toameh back then was also music to Sheehan's ears: he blamed Israel's annexationist West Bank wall on, wait for it, "Yasser Arafat's intifada," and called Fatah a "mafia" and a "monster." Hamas, by contrast, Toameh thought "much less corrupt, much more competent, and more pragmatic." Aha! So the prophet and scourge had ruled, in 2006, that Hamas was PRAGMATIC? But hold on! In Sheehan's 12/1/09 column, It's too easy just to blame Jews, he's written that "Hamas is, above all, about jihad." So, who's right, the prophet and scourge, or the SMH's "armchair expert"? Is Hamas a pragmatic organization to be preferred over its corrupt and incompetent Fatah rival (Toameh), or is it just another jihadi arm of Al-Qaidah (Sheehan)? Questions! Questions!
Finally, one last bolt of blinding insight from Toameh out of Sheehan ("At the time [11/08], Toameh described Gaza as 'a frightening situation'. And that was well before Israel's military offensive.") and that, as Peter Cundall (a man who knew good manure when he saw it) used to say, is your lot for the week.
The SMH, slip, slip, slip-sliding away...
A disclosure of sorts duly emerged in Sheehan's column of 19/1/09, Obama is walking a high wire. To find it one had first to wade through the following sludge: Barak Obama is eminently qualified for the presidency because he displays "intellectual adroitness, from his choice of cabinet to his choice of words. Even his choice of TV show..." Which can only mean that, if you can put together a cabinet that Dick Cheney approves of*, string a few words together (unlike Bush), and enjoy a TV show about "dysfunctional" black Americans, you've got the makings of an American president that Sheehan would approve of. All this, however, is just by way of getting to the real subject of the column - the Middle East conflict.
[*Cheney has described Obama's national security team as "a pretty good team."]
Sheehan opines that "it is of some concern that [Obama] will make the Middle East his priority, in particular the Arab-Jewish schism." Why this should be concerning he doesn't say. Then there's that nonsense about "the Arab-Jewish schism." I certainly wasn't aware that there was once a religion, X, which split into Arabs (an ethnic descriptor) and Jews (a religious descriptor), but that's Sheehan for you. He goes on: "The Israeli-Palestinian divide has done little to enhance the reputation of Congress or American presidents for the last 60 years." Hm. Reading Sheehan is often like reading tea leaves in the dark, and about as useful. He seems to be saying that Congress/American presidents have always come out the worst for wear as far as the Middle East conflict is concerned. If so, the logical thing would suely be to acknowledge the reason for this state of affairs - the Israel Lobby's stranglehold on US policy in the Middle East. But Sheehan's not going there, of course.
"Here," he rambles on, "I have found another significant detail about the new president. Last year, in Chicago, Obama spent 2 hours being briefed by Khaled Abu Toameh. He listened, he wrote a lot of notes', Toameh told me." Toameh who? "For years Toameh has repeatedly antagonised and embarrassed the Israeli Government, and the Fatah and Hamas parties in the Palestinian territories, by exposing lies and brutal acts on all sides." The Israeli Government, really? Let's check out Toameh's latest (2/1/09) antagonisings and embarrassings of the Israeli Government, shall we? "In recent weeks, Hamas and its supporters did almost everything to drag Israel into a new round of violence. By refusing to extend the unofficial [!?] cease-fire with Israel that expired 2 weeks ago, Hamas paved the way for the massive IDF operation designed to halt the rocket attacks on Israel. The Palestinians who are now shouting and crying because of the Israeli offensive should direct their anger first and foremost toward the 'elected' [!!?] government of Hamas. Tragically, the Palestinians who voted for Hamas and those who continue to rally behind the movement are responsible for the ongoing violence. They had a chance to revolt against Hamas, but chose to either remain silent or continue siding with the movement." (Hamas & the Palestinians, hudsonny.org) The man's a veritable scourge! You couldn't possibly get anything more antagonising and embarrassing for Israel than that, now could you?
Toameh who? "Toameh is a Palestinian Muslim who lives in East Jerusalem. He works as the Palestinian affairs correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, is an authority on Fatah and Hamas, and is widely sought as a consultant by foreign media." Yes, this fearless antagoniser and embarrasser of Israel works for the rightwing Jerusalem Post, and is much sought after by the right people, like those over at the Hudson New York thinktank (hudsonny.com), for example, which recruits "moderate Muslims" to, among other things, "counter lawsuits intended to intimidate and silence critics of religious extremism, and combat States which train children to be suicide killers." At Hudson-NY, you'll be pleased to know that Toameh rubs shoulders with other much sought after antagonisers and embarrassers of Israel such as Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, Douglas Feith and Irshad Manji.
Now according to Sheehan, Toameh reckons Israel, the US and the EU "have been deluded about the growing strength and pragmatism of Hamas." Back to those tealeaves in the dark. Does this mean that Toameh thinks Hamas is a pragmatic organization, but the 3 amigos don't believe it is, or that he thinks Hamas is not pragmatic but the 3 amigos believe it is? And you'd better give a rat's arse what Toameh thinks, folks, because, according to Sheehan, "everything [Toameh] predicted has come to pass." And what, dear reader, has this prophet and scourge of Israel predicted? Sheehan doesn't say. But, hey, the fact that, according to Sheehan, Obama "has gone outside the policy makers, think-tankers, lobbyists and armchair experts" and listened to "someone who inhabits the dangerous territory between... sworn enemies" gives us a real "insight" into the man. Oh? And who, I wonder, brought them together? Hudson-NY?
Ah, at last: "I had a briefing with Toameh in November, though can claim no credit for finding him. It was part of a study tour for Australian journalists to Israel, sponsored by the Jewish Board of Deputies which was omitted from my column last week." Why was it omitted? And who, pray tell, omitted it? Questions! Questions!
But it's not so much the forced, buried, glancing nature of Sheehan's disclosure that concerns me - that was utterly predictable. No, something else has been omitted here. You see, Sheehan's met the prohet and scourge before on a previous trip to Israel in 2006, a trip, which, if sponsored by the JBOD, is a fact he also failed to disclose at the time. That trip yielded 2 pro-Israel columns, the second of which, A sovereign Palestine? No chance (1/1/07), introduced us to a "prominent Palestinian moderate, Khaled Abu Toameh... who writes for The Jerusalem Post." Toameh back then was also music to Sheehan's ears: he blamed Israel's annexationist West Bank wall on, wait for it, "Yasser Arafat's intifada," and called Fatah a "mafia" and a "monster." Hamas, by contrast, Toameh thought "much less corrupt, much more competent, and more pragmatic." Aha! So the prophet and scourge had ruled, in 2006, that Hamas was PRAGMATIC? But hold on! In Sheehan's 12/1/09 column, It's too easy just to blame Jews, he's written that "Hamas is, above all, about jihad." So, who's right, the prophet and scourge, or the SMH's "armchair expert"? Is Hamas a pragmatic organization to be preferred over its corrupt and incompetent Fatah rival (Toameh), or is it just another jihadi arm of Al-Qaidah (Sheehan)? Questions! Questions!
Finally, one last bolt of blinding insight from Toameh out of Sheehan ("At the time [11/08], Toameh described Gaza as 'a frightening situation'. And that was well before Israel's military offensive.") and that, as Peter Cundall (a man who knew good manure when he saw it) used to say, is your lot for the week.
The SMH, slip, slip, slip-sliding away...
Monday, December 22, 2008
Absent-Minded Professors Inadvertently Set Iraq Ablaze
Chaos, panic & disorder - our work is done.
"With George W Bush's presidency about to end, what will happen to the neoconservatives? Rarely in the history of US politics has a small number of bookish intellectuals had so much influence on foreign policy as the neo-cons had under Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, neither of whom is noted for his deep intellectual interests... Writing for journals such as The Weekly Standard and using the pulpits of think tanks... neocons offered an intellectual boost to the invasion of Iraq. The logic of the US mission to spread freedom across the globe - grounded, it was argued, in American history since the founding fathers - demanded nothing less." (As wrong as neo-cons were, Obama may have to preserve their ideals, Ian Buruma*, The Australian, 13/12/08)
[* "[P]rofessor of human rights at Bard College, New York state."]
Yadda, yadda, yadda. Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton, Libby & Co, all American boys, albeit bookish to a fault, committed to the (exclusively) American ideals of promoting freedom here, there, & everywhere, beginning with Iraq's transformation into a Jeffersonian democracy, just happened to be sauntering by, heads in the clouds as usual, minding their own business, when they were accosted by two "powerful leaders with an authoritarian bent" - the suave and charismatic Dubya and his Svengali Dick Cheney - whose pheromones fairly turned the neocon's cloud-wreathed heads and sucked them into slavish, but "misguided", service of these two ambitious autocrats.
Yeah, right. This is what passes for 'quality journalism' in Murdoch fishwrapper.
Enough already! We are lucky indeed to have an antidote to such rubbish - Stephen J Sniegoski's The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel (2008).
As its title suggests, Sniegoski's book "examines a controversial and in some respects taboo subject: the close relationship of the American neoconservatives with the Israeli Likudnik right, and their role as the fundamental drivers of the Bush administration's militant American policy in the Middle East - a policy which inspired both the 2003 war in Iraq and the equally militant solutions contemplated since for other Middle East policy problems. It marshals evidence to illustrate that the war in Iraq... and the policy that inspired it and continues to inspire our approach to other actors and issues in the Middle East, have their common origin in the orientation of the neoconservative policy towards the service of the interests of Israel... The overarching goal of both the neocons and the Likudniks was to create an improved strategic environment for Israel... [T]his does not necessarily mean that the neocons were deliberately promoting the interest of Israel at the expense of the United States. Instead, they maintained that an identity of interests existed between the two countries - Israel's enemies being ipso facto America's enemies. However, it is apparent that the neoconservatives viewed American foreign policy in the Middle East through the lens of Israeli interest, as Israeli interest was perceived by the Likudniks." (p 4-5)
Some extracts:-
"With the Likud's assumption of power, the most far-reaching militant proposals entered mainstream Zionist thinking, involving militant destabilization of Israel's neighbors and Palestinian expulsion. An important article in this genre was by Oded Yinon, entitled 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s'... Yinon called for Israel to bring about the dissolution of many of the Arab states and their fragmentation into a mosaic of ethnic and sectarian groupings. Yinon believed that this would not be a difficult undertaking because nearly all the Arab states were afflicted with internal ethnic and religious divisions. In essence, the end result would be a Middle East of powerless mini-states that could in no way confront Israeli power. Lebanon, then facing divisive chaos, was Yinon's model for the entire Middle East... Yinon looked upon Iraq as a major target for dissolution, and he believed that the then on-going Iran-Iraq war would promote its break-up... 'In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, 3 (or more) states will exist around the 3 major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north'." (p 50-51)
"[T]he vision of 'regime change' in the Middle East through external, militant action originated in Israel, and its sole purpose was to advance the security interests of Israel. It had nothing to do with bringing 'democracy' to Muslims. It had nothing to do with any terrorist threat to the United States. These latter arguments accreted to the idea of regime change as the primary military actor changed from Israel to the United States. But the Israeli government would continue to be a fundamental supporter of the regional military action, even as the ostensible justifications for the action changed. Israel advocated the American attack on Iraq and preached the necessity of strong action against Iran. It would appear that for Ariel Sharon during the Bush II administration, the strategic benefits that would accrue to Israel from such a militant restructuring of the Middle East were the same as those that Likudniks sought in the 1980s. But unlike Begin's failed incursion into Lebanon in 1982, the Bush II effort not only relied upon the much greater power of the United States but was also wrapped in a cover of 'democracy' and American national interest, effectively masking the objective of Israeli hegemony. This helps to explain the much greater success of this intervention, which has come at no cost to Israel - but at a heavy cost to the United States." (pp 56-57)
"During the 1990s, the neoconservatives were quite open about their goal of War in the Middle East to destabilize Iraq and other enemies of Israel. A clear indication of the neoconservative thinking on this subject - and the intimate connection with Israeli security - was a 1996 paper entitled 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm', published by an Israeli think tank... Included in the study group that produced the report were figures who would loom large in the Bush II administration's war policy in the Middle East - Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser... The 'realm'... was that of Israel. The purpose of the policy paper was to provide a political blueprint for the incoming Israeli Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The paper stated that Netanyahu should 'make a clean break' with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan by which Israel would 'shape its strategic environment', beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad. Significantly, the report did not present Saddam's Iraq as the major threat to Israel. Rather, Iraq was more like the weak link among Israel's enemies. By removing Saddam, the study held that Israel would be in a strategic position to get at its more dangerous foes. In short, elimination of Saddam was a first step toward reconfiguring the entire Middle East for the benefit of Israel." (pp 89-90)
"It was apparent that during the Clinton years the neocons had formulated the entire plan for a Middle East war and had established the mechanisms, with their think tanks and media outlets, to disseminate this view to politicians and the public at large. They had become wedded to the idea, developed earlier by Likudnik thinkers, that it was necessary to bring about a reconfiguration of the Middle East, not only by removing those regimes that opposed Israel but also by fragmenting some of those countries. And they perceived Iraq as the initial target for the overall Middle East effort. Significantly, they saw the need for American involvement - quickly moving from the idea that the United States would be supportive of Israeli military action to the point where the United States would initiate military action itself. To achieve such American involvement it would be necessary to show how the United States itself was directly threatened; thus, by the end of the 1990s the neocons were portraying Saddam as an especially lethal threat to the American homeland. In actuality, however, the removal of Saddam was simply intended to be the beginning phase in the overall restructuring of the Middle East. The neocons were quite unified in presenting the danger Saddam allegedly posed to the United States, and their think tanks and media outlets could effectively disseminate this view. However, they could not achieve their goal by simply being a 'shadow defense department'; what was needed was to gain a prominent role in the foreign-policy and national-security apparatus of the next administration, and then perhaps await a 'catastrophic and catalyzing event' (as the PNAC report deemed necessary) to fully implement their program. All of this would soon come to pass." (pp 102-103)
"Whereas George W Bush had not expressed any interest in eliminating Saddam, Cheney, at a celebration dinner after the 2000 presidential campaign, reportedly told a group of friends that the new administration might have an opportunity to correct the mistake of the previous Bush administration of having left Saddam Hussein in control of Iraq. Cheney would be in a position to facilitate this development. Cheney was in charge of the new administration's transition team between the election in November 2000 and Bush's inauguration in January 2001, and used that position to staff national security positions with his neoconservative associates, who would promote the Middle East war agenda." (p 114)
"The neoconservatives made Iraq a key issue in the bush administration from the very beginning. According to Richard Clarke, who was a counter-terrorism advisor early in the Bush administration, Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives in the administration were fixated on Iraq as the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. When, in April 2001, the White House convened a top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, Wolfowitz expressed the view that Saddam Hussein was a far more important subject than Al Qaeda, which had been Clarke's focus. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said he could not 'understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden'. The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam. To bolster his contention, Wolfowitz cited the eccentric views of neocon favorite Laurie Mylroie, who saw the hand of Saddam behind much of the terrorism of the 1990s, including the World Trade Towers attack of 1993. For Wolfowitz to express Mylroie's unproven Saddam Hussein conspiracy theory was incomprehensible to Clarke, who opined: 'Here was the number 2 person in the Pentagon saying that he agreed with her and disagreed with CIA, with FBI, disagreed with all the massive evidence that Al Qaeda had attacked the World Trade Center in '93, not Iraq. Why anybody as sophisticated as a Wolfowitz or the others would attach themselves to that sort of stuff, I didn't know'. Of course, if Wolfowitz and other neocons wanted propaganda for a war on Iraq, they would promote such unlikely stories, just as they would later focus on the WMD falsehoods." (p 124)
"In the eyes of Israel's leaders, the September 11 attack had joined the United States and Israel together against a common enemy. And that enemy was not in far off Afghanistan, but was geographically close to Israel. Israel's traditional enemies would now become America's as well. Israel now would have a free hand to deal harshly with the Palestinians under the cover of a 'war on terrorism'. Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation would simply be portrayed as 'terrorism'. Conversely, America would make itself the enemy of those who previously had focused on Israel." (p 139)
"For the neocons, the terrible tragedy of 9/11 offered the extremely convenient pretext to implement their war agenda for the United States. 'Before 9/11', war critic Joseph Wilson writes, 'regime change by invasion was still just a fringe part of the debate about how to handle Saddam Hussein'. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the neoconservatives found the perfect climate to publicly push for a wider war on terrorism that would immediately deal with Israel's enemies, starting with Iraq. 'At the beginning of the administration people were talking about Iraq but it wasn't doable. There was no heft', observed neocon Kenneth Adelman. 'That changed with September 11 because then people were willing to confront the reality of an international terrorist network, and terrorist states such as Iraq'. Perle concurred that 'Nine-eleven was the turning point with respect to leaving Saddam unmolested'... According to Bob Woodward in Bush at War, as early as the day after the terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 'raised the question of attacking Iraq Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? he asked." (pp 140-141)
"As a result of 9/11, the neocons became the guiding force in American foreign policy. Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger in 2004 explained the neocon's success: 'The neocons were organized. They had intellectual content. Bush was not totally captured by it but tends in that direction'. As time progressed, Bush would follow more and more of their agenda... [T]he events of 9/11... had a profound impact on Bush's psyche, causing him to embrace the neocon's pre-packaged simple solution of a war of good vs evil [which] was undoubtedly in line with Bush's purported Christian evangelical beliefs. Furthermore, Bush's adoption of the neocon war agenda provided him with his purpose in life, which he identified as the will of God." (p 147)
"The adoption of the neocon agenda with its focus on Iraq and the Middle East would distract the United States from consolidating its control of Afghanistan, which could have been used for the American domination of the Eurasian landmass along the lines of the thinking of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Control of Central Asia had been abandoned, or, at least, put on the back burner, in the move to invade Iraq and thence achieve regime change elsewhere in the Middle East. None of these goals had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. The morass that the United States would find in Iraq, a quagmire that was easy to predict, would not enhance American global domination. It would, however, bring about the destabilization of the Middle East sought by the neocons and the Israeli Likudniks. In a fundamental sense, American hegemonic interests had been trumped by Zionist ones." (p 150)
The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel - the perfect companion treatise to Mearsheimer & Walt's The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy.
"With George W Bush's presidency about to end, what will happen to the neoconservatives? Rarely in the history of US politics has a small number of bookish intellectuals had so much influence on foreign policy as the neo-cons had under Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, neither of whom is noted for his deep intellectual interests... Writing for journals such as The Weekly Standard and using the pulpits of think tanks... neocons offered an intellectual boost to the invasion of Iraq. The logic of the US mission to spread freedom across the globe - grounded, it was argued, in American history since the founding fathers - demanded nothing less." (As wrong as neo-cons were, Obama may have to preserve their ideals, Ian Buruma*, The Australian, 13/12/08)
[* "[P]rofessor of human rights at Bard College, New York state."]
Yadda, yadda, yadda. Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton, Libby & Co, all American boys, albeit bookish to a fault, committed to the (exclusively) American ideals of promoting freedom here, there, & everywhere, beginning with Iraq's transformation into a Jeffersonian democracy, just happened to be sauntering by, heads in the clouds as usual, minding their own business, when they were accosted by two "powerful leaders with an authoritarian bent" - the suave and charismatic Dubya and his Svengali Dick Cheney - whose pheromones fairly turned the neocon's cloud-wreathed heads and sucked them into slavish, but "misguided", service of these two ambitious autocrats.
Yeah, right. This is what passes for 'quality journalism' in Murdoch fishwrapper.
Enough already! We are lucky indeed to have an antidote to such rubbish - Stephen J Sniegoski's The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel (2008).
As its title suggests, Sniegoski's book "examines a controversial and in some respects taboo subject: the close relationship of the American neoconservatives with the Israeli Likudnik right, and their role as the fundamental drivers of the Bush administration's militant American policy in the Middle East - a policy which inspired both the 2003 war in Iraq and the equally militant solutions contemplated since for other Middle East policy problems. It marshals evidence to illustrate that the war in Iraq... and the policy that inspired it and continues to inspire our approach to other actors and issues in the Middle East, have their common origin in the orientation of the neoconservative policy towards the service of the interests of Israel... The overarching goal of both the neocons and the Likudniks was to create an improved strategic environment for Israel... [T]his does not necessarily mean that the neocons were deliberately promoting the interest of Israel at the expense of the United States. Instead, they maintained that an identity of interests existed between the two countries - Israel's enemies being ipso facto America's enemies. However, it is apparent that the neoconservatives viewed American foreign policy in the Middle East through the lens of Israeli interest, as Israeli interest was perceived by the Likudniks." (p 4-5)
Some extracts:-
"With the Likud's assumption of power, the most far-reaching militant proposals entered mainstream Zionist thinking, involving militant destabilization of Israel's neighbors and Palestinian expulsion. An important article in this genre was by Oded Yinon, entitled 'A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s'... Yinon called for Israel to bring about the dissolution of many of the Arab states and their fragmentation into a mosaic of ethnic and sectarian groupings. Yinon believed that this would not be a difficult undertaking because nearly all the Arab states were afflicted with internal ethnic and religious divisions. In essence, the end result would be a Middle East of powerless mini-states that could in no way confront Israeli power. Lebanon, then facing divisive chaos, was Yinon's model for the entire Middle East... Yinon looked upon Iraq as a major target for dissolution, and he believed that the then on-going Iran-Iraq war would promote its break-up... 'In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, 3 (or more) states will exist around the 3 major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north'." (p 50-51)
"[T]he vision of 'regime change' in the Middle East through external, militant action originated in Israel, and its sole purpose was to advance the security interests of Israel. It had nothing to do with bringing 'democracy' to Muslims. It had nothing to do with any terrorist threat to the United States. These latter arguments accreted to the idea of regime change as the primary military actor changed from Israel to the United States. But the Israeli government would continue to be a fundamental supporter of the regional military action, even as the ostensible justifications for the action changed. Israel advocated the American attack on Iraq and preached the necessity of strong action against Iran. It would appear that for Ariel Sharon during the Bush II administration, the strategic benefits that would accrue to Israel from such a militant restructuring of the Middle East were the same as those that Likudniks sought in the 1980s. But unlike Begin's failed incursion into Lebanon in 1982, the Bush II effort not only relied upon the much greater power of the United States but was also wrapped in a cover of 'democracy' and American national interest, effectively masking the objective of Israeli hegemony. This helps to explain the much greater success of this intervention, which has come at no cost to Israel - but at a heavy cost to the United States." (pp 56-57)
"During the 1990s, the neoconservatives were quite open about their goal of War in the Middle East to destabilize Iraq and other enemies of Israel. A clear indication of the neoconservative thinking on this subject - and the intimate connection with Israeli security - was a 1996 paper entitled 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm', published by an Israeli think tank... Included in the study group that produced the report were figures who would loom large in the Bush II administration's war policy in the Middle East - Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser... The 'realm'... was that of Israel. The purpose of the policy paper was to provide a political blueprint for the incoming Israeli Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The paper stated that Netanyahu should 'make a clean break' with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan by which Israel would 'shape its strategic environment', beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad. Significantly, the report did not present Saddam's Iraq as the major threat to Israel. Rather, Iraq was more like the weak link among Israel's enemies. By removing Saddam, the study held that Israel would be in a strategic position to get at its more dangerous foes. In short, elimination of Saddam was a first step toward reconfiguring the entire Middle East for the benefit of Israel." (pp 89-90)
"It was apparent that during the Clinton years the neocons had formulated the entire plan for a Middle East war and had established the mechanisms, with their think tanks and media outlets, to disseminate this view to politicians and the public at large. They had become wedded to the idea, developed earlier by Likudnik thinkers, that it was necessary to bring about a reconfiguration of the Middle East, not only by removing those regimes that opposed Israel but also by fragmenting some of those countries. And they perceived Iraq as the initial target for the overall Middle East effort. Significantly, they saw the need for American involvement - quickly moving from the idea that the United States would be supportive of Israeli military action to the point where the United States would initiate military action itself. To achieve such American involvement it would be necessary to show how the United States itself was directly threatened; thus, by the end of the 1990s the neocons were portraying Saddam as an especially lethal threat to the American homeland. In actuality, however, the removal of Saddam was simply intended to be the beginning phase in the overall restructuring of the Middle East. The neocons were quite unified in presenting the danger Saddam allegedly posed to the United States, and their think tanks and media outlets could effectively disseminate this view. However, they could not achieve their goal by simply being a 'shadow defense department'; what was needed was to gain a prominent role in the foreign-policy and national-security apparatus of the next administration, and then perhaps await a 'catastrophic and catalyzing event' (as the PNAC report deemed necessary) to fully implement their program. All of this would soon come to pass." (pp 102-103)
"Whereas George W Bush had not expressed any interest in eliminating Saddam, Cheney, at a celebration dinner after the 2000 presidential campaign, reportedly told a group of friends that the new administration might have an opportunity to correct the mistake of the previous Bush administration of having left Saddam Hussein in control of Iraq. Cheney would be in a position to facilitate this development. Cheney was in charge of the new administration's transition team between the election in November 2000 and Bush's inauguration in January 2001, and used that position to staff national security positions with his neoconservative associates, who would promote the Middle East war agenda." (p 114)
"The neoconservatives made Iraq a key issue in the bush administration from the very beginning. According to Richard Clarke, who was a counter-terrorism advisor early in the Bush administration, Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives in the administration were fixated on Iraq as the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. When, in April 2001, the White House convened a top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, Wolfowitz expressed the view that Saddam Hussein was a far more important subject than Al Qaeda, which had been Clarke's focus. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said he could not 'understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden'. The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam. To bolster his contention, Wolfowitz cited the eccentric views of neocon favorite Laurie Mylroie, who saw the hand of Saddam behind much of the terrorism of the 1990s, including the World Trade Towers attack of 1993. For Wolfowitz to express Mylroie's unproven Saddam Hussein conspiracy theory was incomprehensible to Clarke, who opined: 'Here was the number 2 person in the Pentagon saying that he agreed with her and disagreed with CIA, with FBI, disagreed with all the massive evidence that Al Qaeda had attacked the World Trade Center in '93, not Iraq. Why anybody as sophisticated as a Wolfowitz or the others would attach themselves to that sort of stuff, I didn't know'. Of course, if Wolfowitz and other neocons wanted propaganda for a war on Iraq, they would promote such unlikely stories, just as they would later focus on the WMD falsehoods." (p 124)
"In the eyes of Israel's leaders, the September 11 attack had joined the United States and Israel together against a common enemy. And that enemy was not in far off Afghanistan, but was geographically close to Israel. Israel's traditional enemies would now become America's as well. Israel now would have a free hand to deal harshly with the Palestinians under the cover of a 'war on terrorism'. Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation would simply be portrayed as 'terrorism'. Conversely, America would make itself the enemy of those who previously had focused on Israel." (p 139)
"For the neocons, the terrible tragedy of 9/11 offered the extremely convenient pretext to implement their war agenda for the United States. 'Before 9/11', war critic Joseph Wilson writes, 'regime change by invasion was still just a fringe part of the debate about how to handle Saddam Hussein'. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the neoconservatives found the perfect climate to publicly push for a wider war on terrorism that would immediately deal with Israel's enemies, starting with Iraq. 'At the beginning of the administration people were talking about Iraq but it wasn't doable. There was no heft', observed neocon Kenneth Adelman. 'That changed with September 11 because then people were willing to confront the reality of an international terrorist network, and terrorist states such as Iraq'. Perle concurred that 'Nine-eleven was the turning point with respect to leaving Saddam unmolested'... According to Bob Woodward in Bush at War, as early as the day after the terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 'raised the question of attacking Iraq Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? he asked." (pp 140-141)
"As a result of 9/11, the neocons became the guiding force in American foreign policy. Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger in 2004 explained the neocon's success: 'The neocons were organized. They had intellectual content. Bush was not totally captured by it but tends in that direction'. As time progressed, Bush would follow more and more of their agenda... [T]he events of 9/11... had a profound impact on Bush's psyche, causing him to embrace the neocon's pre-packaged simple solution of a war of good vs evil [which] was undoubtedly in line with Bush's purported Christian evangelical beliefs. Furthermore, Bush's adoption of the neocon war agenda provided him with his purpose in life, which he identified as the will of God." (p 147)
"The adoption of the neocon agenda with its focus on Iraq and the Middle East would distract the United States from consolidating its control of Afghanistan, which could have been used for the American domination of the Eurasian landmass along the lines of the thinking of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Control of Central Asia had been abandoned, or, at least, put on the back burner, in the move to invade Iraq and thence achieve regime change elsewhere in the Middle East. None of these goals had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. The morass that the United States would find in Iraq, a quagmire that was easy to predict, would not enhance American global domination. It would, however, bring about the destabilization of the Middle East sought by the neocons and the Israeli Likudniks. In a fundamental sense, American hegemonic interests had been trumped by Zionist ones." (p 150)
The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel - the perfect companion treatise to Mearsheimer & Walt's The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy.
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