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Attention deficit Americans are being misled to war
Saturday, July 15
by Paul Craig Roberts
A terrible thing is happening, and not enough Americans are aware to be able to do anything about it. Zionists in Israel and in the Bush administration are leading America into war with Iran, Syria, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. The consequences for America, Israel and the Middle East will be disastrous, but as long as Washington is in thrall to Zionist paranoia, nothing can be done about it. Bush made this clear on July 14 when he rejected the plea from Lebanon's prime minister to pressure Israel to stop its attack on Lebanon.
The war began when Bush's neoconservative government invaded Afghanistan and Iraq under the pretense of "fighting terrorism." Neither front has gone well for America. The Israelis, seeing the growing domestic opposition to Bush's wars of choice, concluded that they are in danger of losing America's military intervention in behalf of their Middle East interests. Israel decided to force the issue.
Israel did this by bombing and invading Gaza, from which they had just withdrawn as part of a "Palestinian settlement." Israel's pretext was the capture of one Israeli soldier in Gaza in retribution for Israel's genocidal policies toward Palestine. Few Americans know that Israel has forced Palestinians into ghettos and walled them off from their farm lands, schools, and medical treatment.
By slaughtering scores of civilians and destroying the infrastructure of the fragile land in response to the capture of one Israeli soldier, Israel has made it clear that its policy is fire and sword.
Under international law - the identical law that was used to try Nazi war criminals after World War II - Israel's invasion of Gaza is a monstrous war crime. The United Nations top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, said that Israel's attacks on civilians and infrastructure violated international law.
On July 13, the UN Security Council tried to condemn Israel for its criminal invasion of Gaza, but US Ambassador John Bolton, a rabid pro-Israeli zealot, vetoed the Security Council resolution that would have required Israel to halt its illegal and criminal actions in Gaza. Bolton is the UN ambassador who could not get confirmed even in a Republican Senate and was given a recess appointment by Bush in defiance of Congress.
On July 12, Israel invaded Lebanon. The pretext was the capture of two Israeli soldiers in Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory by Hizbollah. In two days Israel has slaughtered scores of Lebanese civilians, destroyed bridges and power plants, attacked the Beruit International Airport and blocked Lebanese ports.
Israel's over-reactions are calculated to start a wider war. Israel has asserted that the two soldiers captured by Hizbollah are being held in Iran. Israel blames Syria for Hizbollah's acts. Both Israel and its neoconsevative allies in the Bush government blame Iran and Syria for "attacks on Israel" by Hamas and Hizbollah. No one, least of all Bush, blames Israel's Palestinian policy.
Israel's American agents, the neoconservatives, have made it clear for years that their goal is to eliminate every Middle Eastern government that is not ruled by an American puppet friendly to Israel. The people who hold the important positions in Bush's government have frankly stated this position over and over. For example, a decade ago in 1996 a group of American neoconservatives who have comprised much of the sub-cabinet in the Bush administration wrote that Israel could gain American sympathy by blaming aggression on Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran and then seizing the strategic initiative by "engaging Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."
First, however, Iraq would have to be taken out. The first focus, said the neocons, should be "on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right."
Gentle reader, does it not strike you as strange that US citizens, most of whom have held presidential appointments in the Bush administration, are so concerned to plan how Israel can draw upon US blood and treasure to achieve Israel's objectives in the Middle East?
We certainly have to hand it to Israel and its American neoconsevative agents. They have succeeded on entirely false pretenses in launching two wars in the Middle East and now they have prepared the ground for a general conflagration.
Who is to stop them? The Condi Rice State Department? Be serious.
The Democratic Party? What a laugh!
The power mad Republicans who have sold their souls?
The Christian Evangelicals who believe the destruction of huge numbers of people in the Middle East is the lead up to "the Rapture" in which they will be wafted up to Heaven?
The UN Security Council, where the US never fails to veto any resolution or sanction against Israel?
The US and Israel haven't the troops needed to defeat and occupy Syria, Hizbollah and Iran with conventional forces. Pentagon documents have described two ways in which the Middle East can be secured for Israel. One is the use of nuclear weapons. The other is the destruction of all infrastructure - power plants, water and sewage systems, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, ports, and a reduction of much housing to rubble by powerful conventional bombs. In other words, an air war that never ends.
Most Americans are incapable of identifying their own US Representative and Senators. Everything they "know" about the Middle East comes from Israeli propaganda: Israel is the innocent victim, and all Arabs are terrorists with suicide bombs.
America is being led by a handful of traitors into participating in "regime change" that might succeed or might dethrone our bought and paid for puppets in Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. If Pakistan were to fall to Islamist forces, Muslims would have a nuclear capability as a counterpart to Israel's and America's.
Muslims have many reasons to hate us for generations of oppression and interference in their internal affairs. As Iraq has proven, it is not easy to break their spirit. Out-gunned and out-manned, they still resist, motivated by anger and pride.
Many Americans may think that "ragheads" mean nothing to them. But when $200 oil means Americans cannot commute to their jobs in their gas-guzzlers from their far-flung suburbs, or Russia and China intervene because American-Israeli interests conflict with their own, the world becomes a different place for inattentive, uninvolved, complicit Americans.
Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the US Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
This article comes from The Smirking Chimp
The URL for this story is: http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=26899
Roberts may be a bit strident, but he's entirely correct. And he doesn't have to go back to 1996 for the prevailing neocon position. In his Weekly Standard column yesterday, ubercon Bill Kristol wrote:
The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long one. Radical Islamism isn't going away anytime soon. But it will make a big difference how strong the state sponsors, harborers, and financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders - Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism.
Glenn Greenwald, as usual, is one of the few that has his finger firmly on the pulse. His current column at Unclaimed Territory, Is Israel's War Our War?, addresses the push to this new, improved war among neocon pundits, concluding:
It should go without saying that one can believe that Israel is within its rights to defend itself against Hezbollah without also believing that the U.S. should become involved in this extraordinarily flammable conflict. But these neoconservatives don't recognize that distinction. As they are now expressly arguing, Israel's enemies are America's enemies, and this war being waged by Israel ought to become America's war -- and the sooner the better.
I believe it is obvious to most Americans, who have turned completely on the war in Iraq, that it is sheer lunacy to expand that failed war effort to now include American war on even more countries - including more powerful ones with more powerful allies, such as Iran -- let alone to do so as part of, and in the middle of, an Arab-Israeli war. But if there is one lesson that we ought to have learned over the past several years, it is that there is no militaristic proposal too crazed or extremist to be undertaken by this administration. And anyone who thinks that these neoconservatives now lack real influence within the Bush administration is sorely mistaken.
In any event, Israel has given us an October Surprise a bit early. And, however this plays out, it will be bad for the Democrats. Israel is too divisive an issue - and its lobby way too strong - to oppose anything the Executive may attempt. And, of course, being at another war will seem to be good for Republican economic interests as well as political interests (at least, until China starts unloading all of its dollars and seizing American factories on the mainland). And - who knows? - waging war against Syria and Iran could well precipitate an Armageddon of sorts. Perhaps there's something to the Islamist notion of "America the Great Satan" after all...