Their war plan to defeat the Islamic State
The Kagan clan of heavyweight neocons has now advanced a scheme for vanquishing the latest Muslim monster in the Middle East. To put their plan in proper context, we must begin by acknowledging the serious faults in President Obama's own plan to rid the world of the Islamic State, or as he calls the group,...
Read MoreThe crisis in Iraq and the centrality of Israel’s national interest
Writing in the ultra-establishment Washington Post, mainstream liberal David Ignatius observes: The Post publishes views that respectable people are allowed, or even expected, to hold, so it is quite significant that Ignatius's assessment has now emerged on center stage. Of course, it was not given any attention during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq...
Read MoreThe United States, Russia, and Israel
The American involvement in the Ukrainian imbroglio has a number of causes, which include the significant role of the neoconservatives. In a series of articles, investigative journalist Robert Parry has made an insightful analysis of this neocon role, linking it to their opposition to Obama's recent "foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian...
Read MoreNo place at anti-AIPAC conference for the author of Transparent Cabal
It was good to hear that AIPAC's 2011 conference in Washington during the latter part of May faced a counter-conference and demonstration, Move Over AIPAC, organized by Code Pink: Women for Peace, a group that has protested America's wars in the Middle East. It was the first time any large group had dared to make...
Read MoreAs Egypt burns for democracy...
The current uprisings against the autocratic regimes in the Middle East seem to be in line with the neoconservatives' advocacy of radical democratic change in the region. But there is one significant difference. The neocons had sought to use democratic revolutions to overthrow the enemies of Israel, even applying the strategy, unsuccessfully, to countries such...
Read MorePresident Obama is often portrayed as a political neophyte who is forever confronting situations that are far over his head, but his choice of General David H. Petraeus to replace General Stanley A. McChrystal was in some ways a masterly political stroke, though it does not seem to have achieved all that Obama may have...
Read MoreAs the United States berates Iran for its nuclear program — though there is no substantial proof that the latter country even intends to develop nuclear weapons — Washington intentionally overlooks Israel's existing nuclear arsenal so that the latter country will remain free from international inspection. Reporting in the Washington Times on October 2, Eli...
Read MoreThe Obama administration has made Afghanistan the focus of its foreign policy, significantly escalating the war effort there. That is so even though division exists within the administration regarding the degree of escalation sought. Barack Obama's motive for expanding the war in Afghanistan seems to be a desire to appear strong in foreign policy, combined...
Read MoreMemo to Post editorialists: Please turn to page one
In the Washington Post for March 12, an editorial adamantly rejects as a crackpot "conspiracy theory" the allegation that the Israel Lobby was behind the attacks on Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman Jr.'s appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council. However, on the front page of the very same issue, an article by Walter Pincus cites...
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The bankruptcy of the mainstream Left as illustrated by Stephen Zunes
The antiwar Left would prefer that old-style American imperialism and the quest for oil had caused the Iraq War. They are the preferred enemies of the Left. They are the traditional villains. And they are safe villains. Mentioning Israel as a culprit would cause problems: it would lose support for the Left among activist Jews,...
Read MoreA well-tempered smother-out as a new war looms
The initial reaction to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay "The Israel Lobby" consisted of a relentless barrage of vituperative insults, smears, character assassination, misrepresentations, and other inflammatory rhetoric that condemned the essay in toto. In large part, the vicious pillorying of the piece came from members of the Israel lobby denying their own power...
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Israel lobbying
The elephant in the room that no one is supposed to mention is the role of the supporters of Israel in shaping American foreign policy in the Middle East. Their role has become especially apparent with the American attack on Iraq and the subsequent American policy toward Iran and Syria, in all of which the...
Read MoreThe Downing Street memos and Nuremberg
The American Establishment has conventionally praised and invoked the 1945-46 Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership as a model for bringing international criminals to justice. But what if the same standards applied at Nuremberg were also applied to current U.S. policy? And a parallel trial were convened? In such a proceeding, would American leaders fare...
Read MoreWriting at CounterPunch (June 24), Michael Neumann offers a program for the Left to bring about an end to America's war on Iraq. In so doing, he makes some poignant and also trenchant points, though I take exception to some of his analysis. Bush's war now enjoys less than 50 percent support among those polled....
Read MoreIdealistic democracy, total hypocrisy, and Israel
Their product line has its faults, but American propaganda-hawkers have proved one thing, at least: they are a nimble bunch of peddlers. When their fables about Saddam's link to Osama bin Laden fell flat in the marketplace, they concentrated on retailing the WMD lie; and then, when they could no longer sell that one, they...
Read MoreWhen the Mossad speaks, people listen
An intriguing but problematic article about the American imperium in the Middle East appeared recently in Israel, titled "The Coming Pax Americana."[1] Its author is none other than Efraim Halevy, former head of the Mossad and national-security advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Halevy, who served forty years in the Mossad, is obviously a man...
Read MoreA closer look
While the neoconservatives were the driving force behind the American invasion of Iraq and the consequent efforts to bring about regime change throughout the Middle East, the idea for such a war did not originate with American neocon thinkers but rather in Israel. An obvious linkage exists between the war position of the neocons and...
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Prefiguration and prelude to the 2003 Iraq debacle
When the Bush I administration fought the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, with a bombing campaign and brief ground invasion, the American people were in ecstasy over a victory that was quick and (at least for Americans) largely bloodless. And unlike the case with Bush II's war, the United States was able to escape...
Read MoreSharansky, Weissglas,
and the Inaugural address
The major media have had much to say about George W. Bush's Inaugural address, in which the president pledged that American foreign policy would be oriented toward promoting world democracy. However, their analysis — whether pro or con — focused on the meaning and intent of the actual words themselves. Most mainstream accounts provided only...
Read MoreWar on Iraq
The most popular argument of the critics of the Iraq war has been that the United States went to war for oil — that is, that the war had nothing to do with combating terrorism. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor before the war, Brendan O'Neill reported that "for many in the antiwar movement, the...
Read MoreThe future of the global War on Terror
What will be the next front in the war on terror? I don't claim to be Nostradamus and I don't have a crystal ball, but I can confidently say that the current situation points to a wider war in the Middle East. That result has been sought and planned for by the American neoconservatives; it...
Read MoreInternationalism and Zionism
Finding himself behind in the polls, John Kerry has begun to focus more intensely on the morass in Iraq, perhaps hoping to restore his fortunes by mobilizing the potential anti-war vote as fully as possible. Kerry has even said that if elected he will remove American troops from Iraq, though his timetable may strike us...
Read MoreOr anywhere else, really
A left-wing Canadian journalist, Kalle Lasn, wrote the obvious, and all hell broke loose. Lasn, editor of the Vancouver-based journal Adbusters, had the audacity to state that many neocons are Jewish! He proceeded to list 50 prominent neocons, finding that 26 are Jewish. Moreover, he declared that the neocons have a "special affinity" for Israel...
Read MoreWriting at CounterPunch, Gabriel Kolko, the left-wing historian and critic of U.S. imperialism, makes the astute observation that John Kerry's multilateralism would be more effective in advancing imperial interests than Bush's unilateralism. ("The U.S. Must Be Isolated and Constrained: The Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power," March 12, 2004) That is because...
Read MorePrankster-in-Chief
I have always regarded the WMDs story as a joke — Iraqi UAVs spraying Washington with poison gas, that one was a real scream — but then I have been said to have a dark sense of humor. Now, however, President Bush has also started to treat the WMD issue as humorous, premiering his hilarious...
Read MoreFinally, a WMD
The revelations of March 21 by former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke on CBS's "60 Minutes" detonated a virtual weapon of mass destruction amid the foundations of neocon war policy. Clarke is not just some odd, mendicant war critic. Nor is he the kind of ex-administration figure, such as the much-smeared Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill,...
Read MoreThe war lies never stop. Now that even David Kay, the former chief U.S. arms investigator, has admitted that there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in recent years, the war liars have simply changed their tune. The current lie is that although there might not have been WMDs in Iraq, all...
Read MoreOn Ross Vachon's "Semitism Gone Wild"
As all my readers know, I write from an objective, moderate outlook and eschew emotions such as hatred. As evidence that my writings are uncontaminated by hatred, I proudly cite the fact that I am one of only a few people on Planet Earth who have been legally declared innocent of the crime of "hate...
Read MoreIsrael now regards Iran as its most dangerous enemy. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Nicole Gaouette reports that "Israel is working on a wide range of measures to undermine Iran's nuclear program, with senior leaders hinting that Israel may take preemptive action if that is deemed necessary." And: "The effort reflects the widespread assessment...
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