America’s very special relationship with Israel.

Posted by Geoff Beck on April 05, 2006, 10:29 PM | #

Matt, this deserves to be put in PDF!

Posted by Andy on April 05, 2006, 10:41 PM | #

From Steve Sailer: 

The Lobby in action: When you Google on Mearsheimer Walt lobby, you find 177,000 references on the Web. When you Google on Mearsheimer Walt lobby “David Duke” you get 55,700 references. So, 30% of all articles mentioning the Israel Lobby study by the two prestigious foreign policy scholars drag in the NY Sun’s utterly irrelevant David Duke red herring smear.

That, in a sick way, reflects an impressive degree of coordination and ruthlessness. At the intellectual level where you’ve even heard of Mearsheimer and Walt, you have to be aware, deep down, that you are humiliating yourself by repeating the David Duke smear. But, apparently, tens of thousands of people are so dedicated to preserving the Israel Lobby’s continued stranglehold on public discourse that they willingly publicly abase themselves morally and intellectually.

And the   entire basis of this AP article http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060405/ap_on_re_us/israel_lobby_flap_2  is the David Duke smear. 

Oh, mainstream media, how I love thee.

Posted by l'Etat on April 05, 2006, 11:07 PM | #

along with the bizarre support of Christian Zionists)

I strongly advise everyone who isn’t already familiar with the role of the Zionist Untermeyer in the creation of the Scoffield Bible to do so:

http://christianparty.net/scofield.htm

Jewry brazenly b.s.ed the US into the Iraq war partly because its leaders had correctly calculated that their position had strengthen beyond challenge. A major asset of theirs are the 40 million Christian Zionist cuckoldlings in the US (mostly whites of European stock) whom view Jews as God’s Chosen, and whose most cherished earthly desire is to see Israel’s rise (in order to deliver the “Rapture”, which of course, wont ever come [suckers…]). Projects to aggressively proseletize Christion Zionism have been long underway in South America, Africa, and Asia.

Posted by l'Etat on April 05, 2006, 11:14 PM | #

An edit:

...in the creation of the Scoffield Bible to do so…

should read:

...in the creation of the Scoffield Bible to become so…

Posted by ben tillman on April 05, 2006, 11:56 PM | #

The paper shows how the Jewish lobby and the neoconservatives took us to war in Iraq in order to protect Israel….

Those who have emigrated from the propasphere knew that before the invasion:

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_conc1.htm

That article was posted 10 Feb 2003, before the invasion.  Walt & Mearsheimer are more than a day late and a dollar short.

They have shown some courage.  But not enough.

Posted by ben tillman on April 06, 2006, 12:07 AM | #

Good stuff, Andy.

I strongly advise everyone who isn’t already familiar with the role of the Zionist Untermeyer in the creation of the Scoffield Bible to do so….

The Scofield Memorial Church is just a couple miles up the road.  Did you know a Bush - a brother of one of the President’s ancestor’s - was a Christian Zionist in the mid-19th century?

Posted by ben tillman on April 06, 2006, 12:21 AM | #

“Christian Hebraist” mght be nore accurate than “Christian Zionist”.

From the New York Times, published 9/24/2004, Late Edition - Final, Section E, Column 4, Page 29:

EXHIBITION REVIEW; Jews in the New Wilderness
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18172

From the spirit of Judaic Messianism grew many dreams. In 1641 the Pilgrim leader John Cotton proposed a theocratic government based on the laws of the Hebrew Bible. But as Mr. Terry shows, the Hebrew Bible also inspired different visions. Samuel Sewall (whose image is shown here), who was a judge in the Salem witch trials but later repented his role and, in 1700, wrote the first attack on the American slave trade. Roger Williams, the minister in Salem, also broke with Puritan ideas, arguing that there should be a ‘‘wall of separation’’ between church and state. His argument, presented to the English Parliament in 1644, is displayed: he requested a charter for the settlement of Providence, where there would be no ‘‘enforced uniformity of religion.’’

***

But nothing is neatly tied up, nor can it be. The Messianic impulse pulls in many directions. Mr. Terry includes an 1844 volume, ‘‘The Valley of Vision,’’ by George Bush, a Christian Hebraist hired as New York University’s first professor of Hebrew. Bush, whose brother Timothy is a direct ancestor of the president of the United States, opposed Messianism and argued that a belief in a New Jerusalem was ‘‘one of the most baseless of all the extravaganzas of prophetic hallucination.’’ But he was not immune to its lures: he later became the leading American advocate for the occult religion of Emanuel Swedenborg and left N.Y.U. to lead the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem in Brooklyn.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 12:53 AM | #

It does not make sense. How has Israel benefitted from this war? There is no mass expulsion of Palestinians. There is no grand vision of a pan Arabian Israel. In fact Kadima has pronounced a desire for disengagement. Hamas has been elected. Iran still sponsors terrorism. No pipeline to Haifa has been built. Israel was never threatened by Iraq. It bombed the Osirak reactor with impunity. Saddam was impotent. No WMD. No nukes. No ties to AQ. If anything, Israel’s ability to strike at Iran has been deterred by the US presence in Iraq. Iraq is now US airspace.

The greatest beneficiary of an American presence in Iraq is Saudi Arabia. Saddam was a threat to the House of Saud. Bandahar wanted Saddam out and Bush complied.

Posted by l'Etat on April 06, 2006, 01:00 AM | #

Here’s another link:

http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.11.15/forward50.html

See entry for YECHIEL ECKSTEIN (number three on the list).

So, they’ve converted 40 million Euro-Americans to Jew-worship. Forty millions. As opposed to how many WNs? Four hundred thousand?

Apologies for the cliche, but this one sums it up: “Houston, we have a [big] problem.”

Posted by James Bowery on April 06, 2006, 03:01 AM | #

If you count the number of people who have transitioned from Jesus to Jews as the innocent victim(s) of the world who died for our sins—ie: conversion from Christianity to Holocaustianity—your Jew-worship figure is bound to be about as big as the Christianity figure used to be back in the old days (as a percent of population) when everyone went to church every Sunday.

Posted by Amalek on April 06, 2006, 05:27 AM | #

M&W are right as far as they go, and their work has been ignored or travestied in the States, but difficulties remain and should not be overlooked:

(1) The aggressively Zionist, Likudnik stance of AIPAC in recent years does not represent a majority of American Jews, who are Democrat-voting liberals disapproving of the Iraq War earlier, and in larger numbers, than white Americans did.

(2) Within American Jewry, the opinions of non- or anti-Zionists and ‘soft’ Zionists who favour an accomodation with Palestinian Arabs are filtered out by Jewish-controlled media. Publications such as Commentary, The New Republic and The Weekly Standard are bitterly scornful of ‘wet’ and ‘self-hating’ Jewish perspectives.

In the MSM owned by Jews, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, a middle course is steered. It’s de rigeur to be sceptical about the USA’s campaigning in the Middle East, but bashing Israel is not so acceptable. Criticisms of specific actions such as shooting missiles into Arab communities or killing stone-throwing boys gets by, but questioning the fundamentals of the Judenstaat is strictly for guest op-eds, and draws concentrated flak from the Lobby. There is far more post-Zionism in Tel-Aviv than in New York City.

(3) On the American Left at large, being anti-Zionist is almost compulsory—to be otherwise makes you objectively a pro-Bush neocon in its eyes—but this obsessive criticism of Israel at the expense of other, at least equally oppressive, regimes (e.g. China/Tibet) rarely escapes into what passes for debate among the political booboisie. For instance, you will not see a prolonged discussion about the legitimacy of Israel or whether it lives up to its founders’ ideals on network television.

(4) The neocons’ long march through governmental institutions, impressive as it seems in terms of results since 2001, would not have been possible without the adhesion of neoliberals and hawkish Democrats such as Scoop Jackson. For them Cold War belligerency and the exaltation of the American Way as a template for the whole of mankind—what Claes Ryn calls neo-Jacobinism—was easily transferable from anti-communism to anti-Islam.

And when the military industrial complex needed a new excuse for keeping the defence budget dropsical, it was happy to fill the coffers of think tanks calling for pre-emptive crusades against states which possessed the world’s reservoirs of oil. It used the fear that haunts suburban America—what if the gas dries up?—to stampede Joe Sixpacks and Suzy Soccermoms into going along with the hysteria and wastefulness of the Project for a New American Century.

Joe and Suzy are not so worried about the fate of Israeli Jews, unless they attend Christian Zionist churches—the basses of the Amen Corner choir. These churches, foreseeing Armageddon and the annihilation of Jews who refuse conversion, are unholy but staunch de facto allies of atheist and agnostic neocons. Future historians will find the conjuncture hilarious.

But then wars rarely have single causes or faultless logic behind them. To some extent the absurd, slavish posture in which America is now found vis a vis a state of a few million people the size of Wales is an accidental precipitate of these larger economic and confessional concerns.

As M&W point out, until the first oil crisis at the time of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, America had been broadly sympathetic and generous to Israel for a quarter-century, but was prepared to rap its knuckles and press it hard to come to terms with its hostile neighbours. As late as Reagan’s day, when the neocons and their gentile allies were not yet in the saddle at the White House and the Pentagon, the US could leave Israel in the lurch over Syria.

The subsequent slow, bipartisan collapse into an unhealthy mutual dependence arose partly from the Republican Party’s doomed pursuit of Jewish votes and campaign money—why should all those loaded dentists and property magnates go on backing thr party of Je$$e Jack$on?—and partly from a perception about the order of battle after the USSR’s fall had left a vacuum in the ME. With Saudi Arabia’s ruling class dependent on the States against rising, hostile regional powers such as Iran and Iraq, it could be persuaded not to menace Israel in return for letting America have bases to protect its oil and strategic concerns around the Gulf.

This semi-acquiescence was hardened by the first Gulf War, and at the same time post-Sadat diplomacy and US bribes had left Egypt (always Israel’s most feared enemy militarily) similarly pacified. With its nuclear armoury growing, Jordan co-operative and Syria cowed, Israel felt safer. But the quid pro quo, a settlement with Arafat, was not pursued; instead Israel chose to offer an insulting Bantustan kind of independence to Palestine while constantly enlarging its colonisation of the Occupied Territories and (under Netanyahu and Sharon) beating its chest, revelling in its protection by the Great Satan.

On the face of it, it is crazy for America to stake so much on the survival of an unpopular entity which has no strategic value since the Cold War ended, and which gets in the way of an accomodation with the countries whose resources keep America lit, warmed and powered. But nation states are not always rational political actors: they have histories, sentiments, feelings of obligation, as individuals do. Americans have bought the idea that Israel is ‘like us’ and should be shielded while the Arabs around it are cajoled or bullied into becoming good democrats.

Besides, money talks. As long as Jews give the Democrats 60pc of campaign contributions and the GOP a fair whack too; as long as their hold over the media, academe, law and the professions is so disproportionate to their numbers; as long as they tend to act tribally and bite their tongues in public over their internal differences; and as long as Arab Americans are mainly poorer, Christian and without such a hold over the levers of opinion… for so long will the strange symbiosis between the proudly multiracial USA and the racially exclusive deposit of Zion endure. No doubt it will weaken, but it will not soon be dissolved.

The ‘Lobby’ will not fall down like a pack of cards because loftier figures than David Duke have now limned it. Pat Buchanan, Paul Findley and others have grumbled about it for decades, but only brief swirls of controversy ensued, usually only harming the critics. But if the chink in the solid door of denial prised open by the two professors can be widened by reinforcements, it may be different this time.

They did well to build an account of the silence-then-defamation tactics of the Lobby into their argument, inviting it to step into the trap of proving them right by the reactions we have seen over the last month. The ability of the tribal elders and orators to silence hostility has been injured by the rise of the internet since the last big rumpus over Zionist influence.

The next few months will tell whether this cat can be put back in the bag before it scratches its captors too visibly for them to refute their accusers.

Posted by john on April 06, 2006, 05:50 AM | #

video of Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski talking about the movie “why we fight”
http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1069

Posted by Geoff Beck on April 06, 2006, 09:13 AM | #

It kind of reinforces that old sterotype of the eternal Jew nation wrecker, though. Oh, why can’t we all just get along. Oh, when will the hate stop!

Posted by Geoff Beck on April 06, 2006, 10:40 AM | #

This irrational and totally unjustified persecution of Jews seems suprisingly uniform; wherever the Jews have settled they’ve been evicted.

I guess it is a good thing Britain supplied the Jews with a whole bunch of plutonium back in the 1960s!

What’s also curious is this list is hosted on a Mexican irredentist site. Apparently, they don’t like Jews either.

http://www.aztlan.net/jewexpulsions.htm

Posted by l'Etat on April 06, 2006, 10:59 AM | #

I hope those who have examined the Christian Zionism links grasp the enormity of the problem… it’s one of many reasons neocons have spoken confidently of establishing a “permanent global hegemony” within a generation’s time—they certainty possess the tools…

Another crucial neocon asset is their control of U.S. intelligence agencies. What that means is that they have full access to NSA intercepts, which includes virtually all worldwide electronic communications. See:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11500.htm

NSA intercepts used to track “opposition activists, human rights workers, journalists, civil society leaders and academics, white nationalists, Democrats”:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/13660737.htm

More on Total Information Awareness:

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0223nj1.htm#

It’s almost certain that the NSA also has secret backdoor access into routers, firewalls, and Windows OSs (it’s standard for U.S. firms to be cooperative on such matters), so activists of any sort should assume that their PC and communications are an open book.

Posted by karlmagnus on April 06, 2006, 11:48 AM | #

These Harvard profs are not your friends, guys.  They are anti-israel only because they think of Arafat as being Che Guevara—it’s a piece of childish 60s nastiness. All three sides are wrong; the Palestinians are among the nastiest bunch of thugs on the planet, the Saudis have totally failed to keep their populace under control and should not be allowwed to control those oil revnues (they should be in a trust fund run by Singapore for the Saudi people, not the government) and the neocon lobby shouldn’t get away with sucking dozy presidents into Middle East quagmires with a lot of soppy and unrealistic rhetoric about democracy.

Coolidge got it right.  keep the foreigners out (Immigration Act of 1924) make them pay their debts and trade honestly and intervene (Nicaragua) only when it’s fairly close, you can be sure of bashing them into shape quickly and you’ve got a tailor made successor to the regime you overthrow.

Posted by JB on April 06, 2006, 12:00 PM | #

[quote=“Desmond Jones”]It does not make sense. How has Israel benefitted from this war?

It was a gamble with a few reasonable predictions such as that ethnic rivalries and grudges in Iraq would make sure there would be chaos for a few decades. That might have been the plans they had for Iraq. If the anarchy spills to Syria and Iran these countries would be weakened. But even though Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc are all enemies of Israel by promoting democracy in arab/muslim lands the neo-cons might be helping more radical anti-israel movements gain power through elections instead of fueling neverending ethnic and religious feuds or planting the seeds of liberal MTV-esque decadence.

It’s a bit like immigration: jews think it’s good for them to reduce whites to the status of minority and even better if we mix ourselves out of existence but our replacers might have more potential for antisemitism, something Steinlight pointed out.

What they think is ‘good for the jews’ may end up being bad for them but I don’t think they’re going to do anything to reverse the trends they started until it hurts them more directly. Their social and political power gives them the opportunity to experiment relatively safely with other peoples’ money and lives.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 12:34 PM | #

Ensuring a secure and timely supply of oil from that region is not foreign to American interests. This concept predated the PNAC by at least twenty years. According to documents released by Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Nixon/Kissinger planned an intervention in 1973 if the embargo continued.

LONDON, Dec. 31—The United States gave serious consideration to sending airborne troops to seize oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi during the 1973 Arab oil embargo, according to a top-secret British intelligence memorandum released Wednesday night.

Seizure of the oil fields, the memo says, was “the possibility uppermost in American thinking [and] has been reflected, we believe, in their contingency planning.”

  The British document—one of hundreds released by Britain’s National Archives in an annual disclosure of government papers that are 30 years old—goes beyond previous accounts in describing what the countermeasures might have been. It assesses as unworkable such options as replacement of Arab rulers with “more amenable” leaders or assembling a show of force. Instead, it describes an airborne military operation as the most feasible alternative, although “a move of last resort.”

“The initial force need not be large,” the document states, adding, “We estimate that the force required for the initial operation would be on the order of two brigades, one for the Saudi operation, one for Kuwait and possibly a third for Abu Dhabi.” After the initial assault, it adds, “the remainder of the force which might eventually amount to two divisions could be flown in from the United States.”

“The area would have to be securely held probably for a period of some 10 years,” it concludes

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 12:39 PM | #

The US saw a portending confrontation with Saddam even then.

The document notes that military action could trigger a confrontation with the Soviet Union, lead to a long occupation of Arab territory and deeply alienate Arab and Third World public opinion. But it discounted the possibility that the Soviet Union would use military force against a U.S. invasion, saying it would seek instead to make political and propaganda capital from the move.

“The greatest risk of such confrontation in the Gulf would probably arise in Kuwait where the Iraqis, with Soviet backing, might be tempted to intervene,” it says, presaging Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 02:41 PM | #

It does not make sense. How has Israel benefitted from this war?

The Israelis have been obsessed with Saddam for a long time and have long wanted to punish him. Saddam not only fired missiles at Israel during the first Gulf War but also funded and rewarded Palestinian terrorists. People who wonder in bemusement what Iraq had to do with terrorism ought to read a bit more about Saddam giving refuge and aid and comfort to terrorists targetting Israel (not America, mind you - there was never a serious Iraq/Al Qaeda link - fruitcake theories to the contrary notwithstanding).

The Neocons have been obsessed with Saddam for years now. There is nothing recent in any of this. In fact, that is fundamentally the reason why Richard Perle wrote the blueprint for a Likud-orientated American ME policy.

For the Neocons, they saw the Iraq War as a War which was a win-win from all points of view - the US gets access to Iraqi Oil, Israel gets rid of Saddam, the US occupies Iraq and puts in a puppet regime (something like a modern day Shah) and a message gets sent out loud and clear to Iraq’s neighbours: “You’re next”.

The invasion of Afghanistan meant that occupying Iraq would allow America to place its troops on the western and eastern side of Iran. Which was another good reason to go to war - given the fact that the Israelis have been worried about Iran ever since the revolution.

And if you need more evidence, Pat Buchanan’s article also sheds light on this. 

It is true that the war has since been a disaster and the actual benefit to Israel has been questionable. But that approaches the issue from the wrong end. The war did not go in the direction that the Neocons had hoped it would. The Neocons are essentially academics and journalists and their understanding of the world beyond America and Europe is poor. Iraq has proved that.

Had they not been so obsessed, they would have realised that occupying a country that is awash with weapons is a very dangerous task indeed. They would have realised that ethnic hatred runs deep in Iraq and it would make civil war inevitable because there will never be a convergence of the interests of all groups - the oil in Iraq is in the Kurd and Shia areas, which always meant the Sunnis would be concerned about being left in the cold while the new regime rakes in the booty.

This brings us to the final point that Jews like all people have their frailties. They make mistakes, they are deluded (perhaps every bit as white gentiles) and their obsessions are often against their own long term interests. Some day, we will find that all this left-liberalism and cultural marxism that Jewry has pushed for more than a century now will harm Jews as much as it is harming the white nations. But that is not the issue.

The issue is how interests are *perceived*. The Neocons perceive Israel’s interests to lie in a Saddam-less Iraq. Jewry has long perceive its interests to lie in a West that has been utterly destroyed (“its good for the Jews”). They have it wrong in both cases. But that does not mean they don’t want it.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 02:49 PM | #

Here is a better link to Richard Perle’s paper.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 02:51 PM | #

Excerpts from Perle’s paper:

Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria’s regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This
has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently
signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 02:53 PM | #

More:

The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 03:01 PM | #

These Harvard profs are not your friends, guys.  They are anti-israel only because they think of Arafat as being Che Guevara—it’s a piece of childish 60s nastiness. All three sides are wrong; the Palestinians are among the nastiest bunch of thugs on the planet, the Saudis have totally failed to keep their populace under control and should not be allowwed to control those oil revnues (they should be in a trust fund run by Singapore for the Saudi people, not the government) and the neocon lobby shouldn’t get away with sucking dozy presidents into Middle East quagmires with a lot of soppy and unrealistic rhetoric about democracy.

Coolidge got it right.  keep the foreigners out (Immigration Act of 1924) make them pay their debts and trade honestly and intervene (Nicaragua) only when it’s fairly close, you can be sure of bashing them into shape quickly and you’ve got a tailor made successor to the regime you overthrow.

But that doesn’t explain why the US chose to go to war. It doesn’t explain what the motives of the Neocons were. It is all very well to wish that Calvin Coolidge were the President instead of the formerly cocaine snorting alcoholic turned “Christian” evangelist. But that says nothing about why the world is the way it is.

The fact that a tiny group could nudge the world’s only superpower into a war that was patently not in its interests on the basis of utterly false claims about WMDs is a remarkable fact about our world today which needs to be probed and explained. Sticking one’s head in the sand doesn’t accomplish that.

Posted by Matra on April 06, 2006, 03:35 PM | #

KM: These Harvard profs are not your friends, guys.  They are anti-israel only because they think of Arafat as being Che Guevara—it’s a piece of childish 60s nastiness.

Mearsheimer and Walt are part of the neorealist school. It is not a form of Third World Chic 60s radicalism. Leftists and liberals dislike all realist international relations theories. Needless to say neocons are anti-realist as well.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 03:55 PM | #

Phil,

Intervention in the ME has been in the US interest for years. The Eisenhower doctrined sought to justify America’s intent to intervene when it served its national interest. Ike intervened in 1957 when the Lebanese felt threatened by the Iraqi overthrow of a pro-Western gov’t.

Eisenhower’s message:

This region has always been the crossroads of the continents of the Eastern Hemisphere. The Suez Canal enables the nations of Asia and Europe to carry on the commerce that is essential if these countries are to maintain well-rounded and prosperous economies. The Middle East provides a gateway between Eurasia and Africa.

It contains about two thirds of the presently known oil deposits of the world and it normally supplies the petroleum needs of many nations of Europe, Asia and Africa. The nations of Europe are peculiarly dependent upon this supply, and this dependency relates to transportation as well as to production! This has been vividly demonstrated since the closing of the Suez Canal and some of the pipelines. Alternate ways of transportation and, indeed, alternate sources of power can, if necessary, be developed. But these cannot be considered as early prospects.

These things stress the immense importance of the Middle East. If the nations of that area should lose their independence, if they were dominated by alien forces hostile to freedom, that would be both a tragedy for the area and for many other free nations whose economic life would be subject to near strangulation. Western Europe would be endangered just as though there had been no Marshall Plan, no North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The free nations of Asia and Africa, too, would be placed in serious jeopardy. And the countries of the Middle East would lose the markets upon which their economies depend. All this would have the most adverse, if not disastrous, effect upon our own nation’s economic life and political prospects.

In 1957, intervention was in America’s interest. Ditto 1973, 1991 and 2001. Ike made it clear almost 50 years ago that the US would not abide a threat to the region.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 04:02 PM | #

Intervention in the ME has been in the US interest for years.

There is a difference between intervention and occupation.

The US never occupied a ME country. Britain, in fact, learnt its lessons in Iraq in the 1920s after it lost thousands of troops to armed guerrillas.

This Iraq War is very different from all other “interventions” because it involves occupying a country and trying to create a “democracy” in a land which had no history of self-government.

I fail to see how this is in US interests. Saddam was not a threat to the US. His rusting despotism was on its knees - economically and militarily. Iraq was nowhere near achieving WMD capability. Iraqi oil could have been obtained by cutting a deal with Saddam on strict terms that if he used oil money for any hanky panky, the Jets would be on their way.

What we have now is a country in total anarchy in which suppyling oil is impossible because the insurgents keep blowing up pipelines. What benefit has this brought the US?

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 04:08 PM | #

The greatest beneficiary of this war has been Iran. Had Iraq not been attacked, public opinion could have been whipped up more effectively against Iran and its nutso President for a possible confrontation on the nuclear issue.

In addition, the liberation of the Shiite majority in Iraq is to Iran’s benefit because the Shiites will always dominate any political system that runs on the one man one vote principle.

Posted by Ethnocentrist on April 06, 2006, 04:14 PM | #

Had Iraq not been attacked, public opinion could have been whipped up more effectively against Iran and its nutso President for a possible confrontation on the nuclear issue.

What ever happened to the furor over North Korea?  Don’t they pose a nuclear threat as well?  Probably not to Israel though…

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 04:28 PM | #

If the nations of that area should lose their independence, if they were dominated by alien forces hostile to freedom, that would be both a tragedy for the area and for many other free nations whose economic life would be subject to near strangulation.

Desmond,

You need to look carefully at the context while interpreting this. When Eisenhower talks about the “forces hostile to freedom”, he means the Soviets. There is no counterweight to US hegemony any more. The situation has changed completely.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 04:33 PM | #

This Iraq War is very different from all other “interventions” because it involves occupying a country and trying to create a “democracy” in a land which had no history of self-government.

Not true. The British established a constitutional monarchy on March 21, 1925.

It provided for a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary government, and a bicameral legislature. The latter was composed of an elected House of Representatives and an appointed Senate. The lower house was to be elected every four years in a free manhood suffrage. The first Parliament met in 1925. Ten general elections were held before the downfall of the monarchy in 1958.

It was an unstable and fragile democracy, however, Iraq was self-governing.

What we have now is a country in total anarchy in which suppyling oil is impossible because the insurgents keep blowing up pipelines. What benefit has this brought the US?

Anarchy matters not. It has not interrupted the majority of oil flowing from the region. The US had to attack. Pressure was building to end the sanctions. In May 2001, Bush was moving to so-called smart sanctions to ameliorate the pressure. The presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, infidels in the holy land, was also problematic, not only for bin Laden but also the House of Saud. US invades and occupies Iraq. The sanctions end and US troops are out of Saudi Arabia. Anarchy, democracy or monarchy, it does not matter. Oil flows from the region in a secure and timely fashion. There is little or no adverse effect on US economic or political prospects. That is definitely, as Ike asserted, in the US interest.

Posted by Al Ross on April 06, 2006, 04:44 PM | #

America’s subservience to Israel is likely to continue until Whites cease to constitute a majority in the US, after which time the indifference of the replacing races(whose members do not believe the preposterous, melodramatic and sentimental Christian malarkey about Zionism and Rapture) should shift policy in a new uncharted direction of support for the Third World countries which provided, and will continue to provide, the new Americans.

    The Jews will have succeeded in their objectives for the US but the victory is sure to be a Phyrric one.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 04:46 PM | #

Anarchy matters not. It has not interrupted the majority of oil flowing from the region.

The Region? What about the oil flowing from Iraq which is what concerns us here? Iraqi oil production is now lower than it was before the war. If the object of the whole exercise is to increase the flow of Iraqi oil, that object has utterly failed.

Anarchy does matter. You cannot even imagine what would happen if Saudi Arabia descended into anarchy. The world economy would go into meltdown. It would be a depression worse than anything ever seen before.

And what is worse, the anarchy in Iraq has resulted in the flow of weapons into Saudi Arabia because the insurgents are running amok. Over time this will make the Saudi fundamentalist insurgents stronger while waging a secret war with the House of Saud.

Saddam could not have attacked Saudi Arabia after the way he was crushed in Kuwait in 1991. There was no strategic threat to anyone.

And I find it strange for you to say it has had no economic impact on the US. The war has already cost billions of dollars (and the final bill could run into a Trillion or more) - the budget deficit has skyrocketed primarily due to Iraq and it is now at record levels.

The chickens will finally come home to roost one day.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 04:47 PM | #

What ever happened to the furor over North Korea?  Don’t they pose a nuclear threat as well?  Probably not to Israel though…

EC, how are you?

The problem is NK does not have oil.

—————————————————————————————————-

Phil,

You need to look carefully at the context while interpreting this. When Eisenhower talks about the “forces hostile to freedom”, he means the Soviets.

Ike also talks about this:

It contains about two thirds of the presently known oil deposits of the world and it normally supplies the petroleum needs of many nations of Europe, Asia and Africa. The nations of Europe are peculiarly dependent upon this supply, and this dependency relates to transportation as well as to production! This has been vividly demonstrated since the closing of the Suez Canal and some of the pipelines. Alternate ways of transportation and, indeed, alternate sources of power can, if necessary, be developed. But these cannot be considered as early prospects.

Fifty years on and the story’s the same. We should not be so dependant on ME oil. We develop alternate surces of power…yadayadayada. It the same old song and dance, but as Ike pointed out, it ain’t that easy.

Posted by karlmagnus on April 06, 2006, 04:49 PM | #

In 1973, I favored military intervention against Saudi Arabia, to reverse their nationalization of the oil and give it back to nice Exxon. I think Nixon would have done it if it hadn’t been for the Watergate nonsense.  Of course, Iran back then was ruled by the splendid Shah, but that was before Jimmy Carter.

America’s BIGGEST foreign policy blunder since WWII, out of a long list, was undermining Britain and France at the time of Suez.  That has made France essentially an enemy of the US, and has given the Middle East a license to get uppity with the oil.

GWB backed the neocons because his daddy lost the ‘92 election for wimping out of the Gulf War too early.  Very stupid, very Texan.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 04:56 PM | #

Fifty years on and the story’s the same. We should not be so dependant on ME oil. We develop alternate surces of power…yadayadayada. It the same old song and dance, but as Ike pointed out, it ain’t that easy.

True. But you don’t need to occupy Iraq to get the oil from Iraq. A deal with Saddam would have achieved the exact same result without any need for the loss of thousands of troops, without stretching the US military to breaking point, without the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, without anarchy, without isurgents running amok etc. If you look at Iraqi oil production figures, they are lower than they were when sanctions were in place.

So if the object was to “liberate” Iraqi oil, that object has failed utterly. Even the most militaristic Neocons like Ledeen now say the war was a blunder.

Who do you read Desmond? Mark Steyn?

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 04:58 PM | #

GWB backed the neocons because his daddy lost the ‘92 election for wimping out of the Gulf War too early.

His daddy lost because of the recession and Ross Perot. Iraq had nothing to do with it. If anything, his approval ratings were at 89 percent when Iraq was finally over.

Posted by karlmagnus on April 06, 2006, 05:06 PM | #

No his approval ratings were at 90% immediately after the wimpout, but by the election 18 months later people realized that the US had committed 500,000 troops to the desert and achieved absolutely zippo in the long run, since Mad Sad was still there. Also the wimpout made Osama’s little piggy eyes gleam with anticipation, as he realized that the US could be taken. NEVER show weakness!

I was in favor of going on to Baghdad in 1991; would have been much easier because no al Qaeda, and more pre-Saddam democratic politicians/clerics left. Also 500,000 troops would have got the job done properly.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:16 PM | #

Martin,

The voters rejected Bush Sr. because unemployment was over 7 percent and rising. And Bush finally lost because Ross Perot took 19 percent of the vote - most of which would have otherwise gone to a Republican candidate.

I saw the Presidential debates of 1992. Iraq wasn’t even mentioned. Perot crowed about “giant sucking sounds” and Clinton about “health and social security”. Bush was on the defensive. Iraq was never debated. To suggest that the public punished Bush on Iraq in 1992 is nothing short of absurd.

I was in favor of going on to Baghdad in 1991; would have been much easier because no al Qaeda, and more pre-Saddam democratic politicians/clerics left.

I am amazed at the number of people who believe the nonsense that the Iraqi insurgency is currently run by “Al Qaeda”. That is a claim that doesn’t stand up to even the most superficial analysis.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 05:22 PM | #

Phil,

What about the oil flowing from Iraq which is what concerns us here?

It is of little concern. The main concern is the security of the flow of the vast majority of the region’s production. Iraq as been more or less offline for 15 years. Iran needs the money and the Saudis are running a deficit. Over the next two years, non-OPEC oil producers are expected to step up production by 2.5 million to 3 million barrels per day. Sure, it will be nice when Iraq comes back on line but it’s not critical. Anarchy in Iraq does not portend anarchy in Saudi Arabia. 117 billion for Iraq and Afstan annually, for a $12.4 trillion economy is peanuts.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:27 PM | #

Desmond,

How did the presence of Saddam in Iraq ever endanger the flow of ME oil? Saddam’s military was blown to smithereens in Gulf War I. The Iraqi economy was in ruins. Saddam could not have threatened Saudi Arabia even in his imagination - not with so many American military bases all over the region (and that’s not even including the ones in Saudi Arabia). 

117 billion for Iraq and Afstan annually, for a $12.4 trillion economy is peanuts.

The actual amount is a lot more than 117 billion.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 05:31 PM | #

Phil,

So if the object was to “liberate” Iraqi oil, that object has failed utterly. Even the most militaristic Neocons like Ledeen now say the war was a blunder.

The object, again, was not to liberate Iraq oil, but to secure oil flow from the region. It has always been in the US interest since the Ike doctrine.

Steyn’s a moron.

A deal with Saddam would have achieved the exact same result without any need for the loss of thousands of troops, without stretching the US military to breaking point, without the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, without anarchy, without isurgents running amok etc.

Why would you base so much on the throw of the dice? What guarantee was there that Saddam cooperates? The only way to ensure security of oil flow from the region is via a US military presence.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:31 PM | #

At page 5, the estimate is between $750 Billion and 1.2 Trillion. That’s not peanuts Desmond. Not in anyone’s language.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:33 PM | #

Why would you base so much on the throw of the dice? What guarantee was there that Saddam cooperates? The only way to ensure security of oil flow from the region is via a US military presence.

Occupying Iraq has turned out to be more a throw of the dice than dealing with Saddam would have been. Saddam would have had no choice but to co-operate. Failure to do so would have brought back sanctions and the threat of military strikes.

The military option was always there. It didn’t have to be exercised in 2003.

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 05:42 PM | #

At page 5, the estimate is between $750 Billion and 1.2 Trillion. That’s not peanuts Desmond. Not in anyone’s language.Over what period?

Occupying Iraq has turned out to be more a throw of the dice than dealing with Saddam would have been.How? The US is in and Saddam is out.

Failure to do so would have brought back sanctions and the threat of military strikes. How often can you go to the well? Every five years you ressurect the coalition? That dog won’t hunt.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:44 PM | #

How often can you go to the well? Every five years you ressurect the coalition? That dog won’t hunt.

Why would you need a coalition? No coalition was needed in 2003.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:45 PM | #

Over what period?

That is the cost of war on the assumption that the US leaves in 2006. So that’s anywhere between $250 Billion to $400 Billion a year (the war started in 2003). Peanuts?

Posted by Desmond Jones on April 06, 2006, 05:46 PM | #

Why would you need a coalition? No coalition was needed in 2003. Then why all the antics at the UN. Every five years the American public will give a sitting President the nod to strike Iraq? It’s fanciful at best.

The last word is yours.

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:48 PM | #

The US is in and Saddam is out.

Sure it’s in. But how long will it stay?

So if they pull out after blowing a trillion bucks, losing 2000 soldiers and maiming 15,000 or more, where does that leave your theory?

Posted by Phil Peterson on April 06, 2006, 05:51 PM | #

Then why all the antics at the UN. Every five years the American public will give a sitting President the nod to strike Iraq? It’s fanciful at best.

The last word is yours.

Because the sanctions were UN sanctions. So it was inevitable that UN resolutions would be sought in order to invade on the basis that the sanctions had been violated.

They did eventually invade without any serious international support. Nothing would have stopped Bush or another President from invading later on.

Posted by Amalek on April 06, 2006, 08:39 PM | #

Joseph Stiglitz, economist, on the true cost of the Iraq Attaq, including the long tail of looking after wounded veterans:

Stiglitz: You have to remember we are an economy of $13 trillion a year. The issue is not whether you can afford it but whether this is the way you want to spend your money. In using the limited resources that we have for fighting this war, we have less resources to do other things. You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren’t here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.

Stiglitz: In our analysis about the cost of war, we only assumed a modest $5 to $10 caused by the war. We wanted to keep our study conservative, so no one would dispute our numbers, and no one did. But I believe that’s a vast underestimation of the true cost.

Full interview at:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,409710,00.html

Posted by l'Etat on April 06, 2006, 10:29 PM | #

I would not be opposed to the war if the objective were to simply steal all the oil of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and avail it to Americans at $10 a barrel (which incidently would still yield the oil companies a fat profit).