More On The Neoconquest
I find it interesting that Israel signed onto a ceasefire agreement after it was announced that Olmert slipped in the polls.
When I first encountered Justin Raimondo on Anti-War.com, I thought he was out of his gourd, and considering his hostility towards Israel, possibly an antisemite. The more time I spend reading up on the neocons’ plans for the Middle East, however, the more I think he’s on to something. I do however retain one major bone of contention: The neocons are not fighting, out of Zionist allegiance, for Israel. They are fighting for their own fiscal self-interest.
Via the Left Coaster:
Suppose Israel developed this list of targets and a plan to destroy and destabilize Lebanon a year ago to set the table for taking control of the Eastern Mediterranean coastline as part of a new compact with Turkey, Britain, and the Bush Administration neocons? What if the real agenda is to facilitate a new oil/gas/water pipeline from Central Asia around Russia, Iran, and Syria through Turkey and past Lebanon down to Israel? Would an alternate scenario look more plausible if the pipeline offered a way for Israel to meet its needs for water, gas, and oil, and allowed Israel to turn into an oil exporter to the Far East in the process to the detriment of the Saudis, Iran, and Russia? And would it surprise you to find out that this plan wasn’t new, but simply an updating of existing plans to make Israel energy independent and to provide the United States with an oil supply separate from Saudi Arabia, once we extend the war to Syria and near-sightedly topple another regime?
Shit, do you remember when… This is a collusion of oil and defense interests masquerading as ideology. It is not Zionism. And it’s a fucking disaster.
Thank G-d, contrary to popular opinion, Israelis are finally starting to wake up.
Your latest reading assignments:
- Sidney Blumenthal: “The Neocons’ Next War” — “By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.”
- International Relations Center: “At War with Syria and Iran: The Neo-Cons May Get Their Wish” — “With no shame in drawing the U.S. into the Iraq quagmire three-and-a-half years ago, the same group of neo-conservatives including William Kristol, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthhammer are pushing for Israel/U.S. go to war with Syria and Iran. What is amazing is that despite the deep mess they got us into in Iraq, President Bush and his foreign policy team is actually listening to them.”
- Financial Times: “Bush ‘believes conflict is a US-Iran proxy war'” — “‘People should not underestimate just how strongly the president feels in support of Israel and in his anger towards Iran and Syria [because of their sponsorship of Hizbollah],’ said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency and now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.”
- Inter Press Service: “Hard-Line Neocons Assail Israel for Timidity”
- Richard Perle: “An Appropriate Response” — “Israel must now deal a blow of such magnitude to those who would destroy it as to leave no doubt that its earlier policy of acquiescence is over. This means precise military action against Hezbollah and its infrastructure in Lebanon and Syria, for as long as it takes and without regard to mindless diplomatic blather about proportionality.”
- Justin Raimondo: “The Return of the Neocons” — “The Israeli blitz may not have succeeded in cleaning out Hezbollah from the southern precincts of Lebanon, but it will almost certainly accomplish the expulsion of the “realists” from the councils of state and put the neocons back in the saddle in Washington.”
Why did I bold-text the bit about Condi before? See Raimondo’s “Bush vs. Condi.” Look’s like Olmert’s got a Condi of his own: “Olmert bars Livni from attending UN Security Council sessions.” See also: “In Mideast, It’s Condi’s Fight Now” …Veddy interesting.
I got the impression from reading all this that americans care more about Israel winning than Israelis themselves.
That sounds about right.
if you call radicalizing the islamic world and driving muslims into the arms of extremists “winning,” then i hope israel loses big time. if you believe, on the other hand, in justice and its translation into regional peace and stability, then may victory come swift.
are you gonna apologize to juan cole next?
“The neocons are not fighting, out of Zionist allegiance, for Israel. They are fighting for their own fiscal self-interest.”
The Jewish Neocons are definitely concerned about Israel. And they are definitely ideologically driven. Which is not to say they are calling the shots, and they are certainly not the only ones calling the shots.
1) Uh, mobileh – exactly how did Israel “drive” the current Lebanese into the arms of radicals?
An objective review of the past 6 years of Lebanese history would conclude that Lebanon was raped by…. who? C’mon, you can figure this one out…. coooome on, I know you can do it…..
Can you raise your head up from the tropes of left-wing thought (the one being promoted in this post is the old “it’s OUR fault for oppressing those poor third worlders) – can you raise your head above these canned mantras and see reality.
2) It’s really not so hard to understand the connection between Olmert’s slip in the polls and the current ceasefire plans. Olmert slipped in the polls BECAUSE he telegraphed his weakness in prosecuting the war, which the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Israelis still think is justified – despite those few loonies who are, in your phrase, “starting to wake up” – a description that would have most of your countrymen snorting with derision.
… but at least a ceasefire will give lefties a chance to stop hyperventilating – before the next outbreak of reality.
*sigh* Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, people are entitled to their opinions no matter how incorrect or misguided others may think them to be. How I wish that the present situation was all to do with a ‘neocon’ strategy gone awry and that by just putting down our weapons and reasoning with terrorists everything would be okay.
But I don’t think this to be the case. There may be some chuckleheads at the highest levels of government, but I suspect this is normal and the Bush administration is not the exception. Moreover, I continually hear the Left carp on about how stupid and ignorant the Bush administation and ‘neocons’ are, yet in the same breath will credit them with grandiose and terribly clever conspiracy theories. It simply cannot be both ways.
Think what you will, but I maintain that we desperately require a world body that means something or we will continue to dance in ever more deadly circles.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/08/13/do1302.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/08/13/ixopinion.html
Leftists always set up their arguments in such a way that Israel always loses. They act as if Israel should have just accepted the Israeli soldiers taken hostage and called it a day. However, any military response will of course only create more terrorists so that’s a loss as well.
So the question is, what should Israel have done? Made another lopsided prisoner exchange and then waited another year or 2 for this to repeat?
I would argue that Israelis have dropped their support of Olmert because of the WAY he conducted the war. Yes to a ground war, no to a ground war, yes to a ground war moments while a cease fire is being debated. Let’s be honest. Olmert failed as a leader.
When I read an article like Raimondo’s that criticizes the “neocons” and fails to mention that it is Bush-Cheney-
Rumsfeld who are calling the shots and says that the U.S. is being “drawn into” a war of Israel’s making, that is not “possibly” anti-Semitism. That is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion 21st century edition.
Having said that, I fear for Israel. The war in Lebanon is a military, political and moral disaster. The Americans (including those “neocon” Jews) who want Israel to widen the war by fighting Syria and Iran are not advancing Israel’s best interests. They are advancing the imperialist fantasies of the same idiots who brought us the Iraqi war.
Thank you, fiftysomething. Though the neo-con founders are ‘born-again Zionists’ (those former friends of Rabbi Hertzberg, z’l, who cared nothing for Israel until ’67), the power of neo-con-ism rests with Cheney and Rummy (idiot-boy’s too psychotic to be involved in much more than being an echolaliac of himself: fear. terror. freedom. terror.). It was, after all, the Dick and Rummy who summoned Bibi to Colorado, to discuss implementing ‘Clean Break,’ the 1996 policy doctrine which begins by attacking LABOR Zionism.
Journalists who lie about everything are better than those who only tell minor truths, and leave out the big stuff. At least, they can be trusted to lie.
Gadi Spero said it best.
I suggest from now on we turn the accepted logic on it’s head. Israel isn’t radicalizing muslims. Muslims are radicalizing Jews.
Who is with me?
Just a thought, and one I don’t really have an answer for, but something that is rattling around in my head on this topic of “radicalizing.”
If actions=radicalization (and not say inculcation=radicalization), in the sense of intense, violent hatred…then certainly African-Americans in this country would have had their own “intifada,” no? Logic would then say that they would have had far more Sheik Yassins than Martin Luther Kings.